A Bar for Spain’s Radical Right, Run by a Chinese Immigrant

Have we reached peak cultural appropriation.

Not surprising at all. Obviously Mr Chen has found similarities between Franco and Mao Zedong, another dictator who is still worshipped by millions in China, ignorant of his cruelty against those opposed him. Even if moving to another country, blind worshippers of a dictator can always find another to kowtow to.

I dare say this fits the narrative laid out by Robert Kagan recently in the Washington Post: The Strongmen Strike Back. It’s worth the read. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2019/03/14/feature/the-strongmen-strike-back/

"The Silence of Others" a new doc on the struggles by Spanish victims of fascism, reveals the power of the "forgetting" culture in today's Spain.

It is not the only place in the world that remembers and kind of miss his "beloved dictator". My country had one for almost 30 years, old people (because it is only old people like in that photo) still have pictures of him and kind of miss him, supposedly because there was no crime back them (do not ask how he kept it like that). My husband from Egypt says that some people (again old people) kind of miss Mubarak, things got more complicated after him, so why not dream about him being in power still? But what surprises me it seeing a bar remembering a dictator, that I have not seen and I don't think I'll never see in my country.

Well, what about expelling the Chinese owner from Spain? Is the money he invested in the country reason enough to let his trashing of so many victims' memories to go unchecked? Regarding the police officers using the place as a break room, it's only another reminder that law enforcement and the armed forces in Spain are ideological right-wing entities.

The spirit of Franco lives on? All I see in that photo are a handful of old men. Not really gonna be around long enough to extol the virtues of fascism, me thinks.

As a Spaniard myself, I feel ashamed. We have not really examined that part of our history and that really shows.

Mexicans for Trump come to mind.

On my way home from Valencia where I'm enjoying the Fallas festival, I'm passing through Madrid en route to Philly; I'll stop by Bar Olivia, use the restroom, and not flush. That will be my protest against such a vile place commemorating that fascist monster.

I love this nonsense. Long live Spanish tolerance! Imagine a Turkish Gastarbeiter opening up a Kneipe in Berlin to the honour of Adolf and selling Curry Wurst!

The bar is run by a Chinese immigrant. So what? Right wing extremists - like any extremist - don't care about facts. Or logic. Or consistency. It's all smoke and mirrors. We know that.

Mr Chen maybe politically agnostic but financially shrewd.

It is Mr. Chen who does not know Franco. My grandparents left Spain because they could not live under the brutality of Franco's fascist regime. Several of their siblings, who were not so lucky, either died or were imprisoned. Those who were not, lived wondering where their next meal would come from or if they would end up in an unmarked grave or thrown off a cliff into the sea. Franco is a murderer, and people who idolize him, idolize the atrocities he committed against his own people not for the good of the country but to impose his own beliefs and to engrandize himself and his family. And while Spain remained neutral during WWII, he was far from uninvolved. He gave unfettered access to the Nazis to test their weapons on the Spanish people; just ask the survivors of Guernika. To have any monument to him, whether a bar or grandiose tomb (glad he will soon be removed from Valle de los Caídos), is disgusting and an affront to all he killed during his brutal dictatorship. Franco ruined Spain for decades and is no different from Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and all other despots. Mr. Chen should study his history.