All The Cava In Spain
plus a little bit of Dante fanfic
On Tuesday, November 4th, Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race, by A LOT.
He did this because he was/despite being a brown Muslim immigrant socialist who openly and actively supports everything Ezra Klein and his ilk told us we should probably just give up in order to win elections against creepy men supported by billionaires and Nazis.
We do not, it appears, have to do this. We probably don’t have to be excited about candidates with Nazi tattoos either.
I was sorry we were not still in New York when the news broke, because I heard that people were shouting and crying and popping bottles on the streets there, I heard that Not Like Us was playing at the victory party, I heard there was a lot of joy.
I felt a lot of joy myself, and I almost cracked open the bottle of champagne that has been patiently waiting in our fridge since early September, even though that bottle is actually waiting for some other event. But Max didn’t want to drink champagne and actually I had to fluff him up to feel excitement and joy about the election results at all.
“Well, this is good but people are going to get disappointed when it turns out he can’t actually do all that shit in his platform” is the paraphrase of his general mood.
IT STILL MATTERS, THOUGH, I said to him. We still get to be overjoyed that a long-shot socialist candidate mobilized a million people, got an entire nation excited about him, kicked Andrew Cuomo’s ass, scared the shit out of the billionaires, freaked out Alan Dershowitz so much that Dershowitz said he would blow his own brains out if Mamdani won — okay, no, since I bother to fact-check my newsletters by hand, unfortunately that is not true, he did not say that — and came out swinging for policies that, whether or not he can deliver on every single one of them, are the RIGHT policies, are some of the basics on which a livable NYC for everybody must be built, are not too much to ask for, are the very beginnings of imagining a future in which oligarchs, demagogues, and fascists are defeated, in which profit, cruelty, and control are not the gods before which we all must bend the knee and be broken.
Hmm, that was one long-ass sentence.
Anyways, so Max agreed we were allowed to be joyful in this moment, WHATEVER COMES NEXT. And we toasted the moment with a delightful orange wine, and we left the bottle of champagne unopened in the fridge.
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“What about this champagne, Amy? You keep mentioning it.”
Okay, I’m gonna try to lay out the argument here.
The bottle of champagne is in the fridge so we can break it open when Trump dies.
I don’t know when this will be. I do know that, whatever the live-forever grifters tell the oligarchs who are afraid to die —
and even though I don’t believe in hell, if I were those guys, I’d probably be pretty scared to die anyways, because Pascal’s wager takes on a different magnitude when you’re actually a monumental macro-villain —
and I’m pretty sure Dante would boot out one of the guys that Satan has in his three mouths or else grow Satan some extra mouths to make room —
I do know, despite the Bryan Johnson-sponsored nighttime-erection internet-of-things cock ring, despite blood boys and on-demand magnesium infusions, despite preventative full-body MRIs —
I do know that everyone dies.
Everyone. Every single person in the history of the world has died. Even Henry Kissinger died, although it took him an excruciatingly long time. This means that Donald Trump will die.
And when Donald Trump dies, whenever that is, I want a bottle of bubbly already chilled so I can celebrate.
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Yes, I said that. I will celebrate when Donald Trump dies. I celebrated when Henry Kissinger died. Not with champagne, but with memes, as the internet does.
When Trump dies, I want champagne. I want memes. I want people shouting and dancing in the street. I want “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” playing on repeat from everyone’s apartment windows. I want bonfires of Donald Trump presidential portraits torn down from post office walls.
And I want all of those motherfuckers still in charge when he dies, if he dies in office, to know that he was hated, that Dante would have shoved Donald Trump up one of Satan’s assholes, where Satan’s asshole teeth will endlessly chew him up and shit him out, only to hoover that shit back in again and start the whole process all over, endlessly, for eternity.
Hell, I’ll write that Dante fanfic myself.
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I understand that in the current environment it is risky for me to say these things. But, well, I can’t be fired, because I don’t currently have an employer, and I would like to clarify that these views are my own, that even the champagne taking up space in the fridge is entirely my idea, that no one else is responsible for my Dante fanfic.
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The champagne, specifically, became a Thing when the internet started its first round of “Is Dear Leader dead?” over Labor Day weekend, 2025, when he was briefly AWOL. There was wild speculation. There were conspiracy theories. There were Weekend At Bernie’s memes. Amongst people I spoke with about this, there were mixed feelings: yes it would be great if that motherfucker would just stroke out and die (recent speculation on Trump’s obvious and continuing health problems suggests he may have had a stroke that weekend he was missing), but we’d still be stuck with all these other cartoon villains, of which I offer this very incomplete list: JD Vance, Russ Vought, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon. RFK, Jr.
These men have collectively done an immense amount of damage to the entire fucking world, such that it’s hard to know which of them will go down in history as the biggest mass murderer of the 21st century — Satan will eventually need to grow a lot of new assholes — and if Trump dies in office these guys will still be in power.
Nevertheless, Trump’s death in office would be a tremendous moment of possibility, what the ancient Greeks used to call a kairos.
This is because he has no adequate succession plan. He is too stupid and too narcissistic to groom someone for that role or allow someone else to be actively groomed for that role in his presence. Of course JD Vance is angling for it, but JD Vance, even if he divorces his heathen wife and marries Erika Kirk, a blond Christian woman (another internet rumor), does not have the charisma that Donald Trump has.
No, I don’t personally think Donald Trump is charismatic. But I know that his kind of charisma works for a uncomfortably large minority of humans living in the United States, and I know that there is no other US-based fascist right now who has that kind of charisma.
Don’t just take it from me, take it from Steve Bannon, who just the other day said:
Look, we have to understand that if we don’t do this to the maximum—the maximalist strategy—now, with a sense of urgency, and in doing this, seize the institutions... if we don’t do this now, we’re going to lose this chance forever, because you’re never going to have another Trump. [emphasis added]
There will be disarray when Trump dies. There will be chaotic power struggles. Factions will factionalize even more. People who feared Trump’s wrath may become bolder, or at least fear other peoples’ wrath instead. If we as dissidents continue to organize, to grow our own power, then we will be more ready to seize that moment.
And, I submit, the more of us who are out there in the streets popping bottles and dancing like the Berlin Wall just fell, the more likely this is to happen.
Which is to say, put a bottle of your favorite bubbly in your fridge, and get ready to party.
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This was actually supposed to be a historical essay about Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who was the fascist dictator of Spain for 36 years until his death in office in 1975, but whose anointed successor, Juan Carlos de Borbón, the grandson of the last king of Spain, turned out not to be especially committed to Francoist fascism, and instead worked with the opposition to transition Spain to democracy, albeit flawed.
I knew almost nothing about Franco before a casual remark someone (I can’t remember who) made during the Labor Day death watch.
“When Franco died,” they told me, “it was said that the people drank all the cava in Spain.”
I latched on to “all the cava in Spain” because it is an incredible image — a people released from bondage to an evil person celebrating that release so determinedly and excessively that they used up all the traditional celebratory beverage in the country. I imagine Spaniards asking Frenchmen to drive some cases of champagne over for them, asking the Italians to send their prosecco, we are out of the celebration beverage, send more, we are not done celebrating.
With this sparkling image in my head I went looking for more information about this event, about Franco himself, and about what happened after his death.
I looked specifically for news articles about the reaction to Franco’s death by the people, and unfortunately I found nothing to suggest that all the cava in Spain had in fact been drunk that week. Of course many people quietly celebrated, in some places more than others — The New York Times reported that “In such contentious regions as Catalonia and the Basque country, champagne bottles were opened in private to toast a long‐awaited opportunity for change.” But Spain did not run out of cava.
Plenty of people were still afraid. This was a consolidated fascist government that had ruled from 1939, when, with Hitler’s assistance, they won the Spanish Civil War. The idea that it might just go away must have seemed impossible. And yet, it did.
Franco was not a dumb man and he ruled for a long time. Unlike Trump, he was concerned with succession and he had chosen his longtime right-hand man and Opus Dei fanatic, Luis Carrero Blanco, as his successor.
In his Christmas 1969 speech, Franco said, regarding the succession, “Everything is tied down, securely tied down.” 1
Blanco became Prime Minister in June of 1973. In December 1973, he was assassinated by Basque Separatists in a dramatic car bombing in Madrid. It is well worth reading the Wikipedia entry on this bombing, which includes a statement about the bombers’ reasons as well as the information that many Spaniards quietly approved of and joked about it, saying Blanco had become “Spain’s first astronaut,” because the bombing threw the car spectacularly far into the air.
Thus, in 1973, Franco, his health failing, was left without a successor.
Nothing was tied down, after all.
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In the summer of 1975, pressed for time, he tapped Juan Carlos for the role. Juan Carlos swore loyalty to the principles of Francoism and parliament appointed him as Franco’s successor. Franco died, finally, as all men do, on November 20th, 1975, and Juan Carlos was crowned two days later.
Immediately upon his death, dissident political parties (all illegal under Franco) released statements demanding change. A group of dissidents in the military, several of whom were then under arrest, released a statement insisting that the crowning of Juan Carlos should not occur without the agreement of the people. In his speech at his coronation, Juan Carlos was conciliatory.2
By 1977 political prisoners had been released and those who had fled in exile were allowed to return home. The first free parliamentary elections since 1936 were held in June 1977.
And, by the end of 1978, a new constitution had been ratified and Juan Carlos had signed it. Francoism was over.
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Obviously the story is a little more complicated than that; stories always are. Spanish democracy is not perfect; one fascinating little tidbit I found during my Franco research was “the Cassandra Case”: the story of a young woman who made a series of tweets between 2013 and 2016 playing on the ‘Spain’s first astronaut’ joke about Carrero Blanco’s death. In 2017 she was convicted of “extolling terrorism,” although the conviction was later overturned. I came across this story not long after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and it’s one reason I didn’t write this essay back in September when I was first digging into the Franco stuff.
And, whether or not Francoism is truly over is still a site of debate. When I started down the Franco rabbit hole, besides old news articles and Wikipedia entries, I also did my favorite research trick and looked up college course syllabi on modern Spanish history to see what the readings were. Most of them were in Spanish, unsurprisingly, but I found a book called Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition, and I was able to check it out from the Boston Public Library.3
Anyways this is a whole book about the legacy of Francoism in modern Spain, and it’s a pretty interesting on how one country responded to its fascist past, what was buried and what was revealed, and how people felt about it forty years later.
Despite these complications, Franco’s death really did usher in an era of greater freedom. Under Franco hundreds of thousands of people were murdered, sent into exile, or held as political prisoners. And, a brand new constitution is no small thing. (We sure as hell could use one here in the US, because ours sucks.)
A NY Times article on the 2nd anniversary of Franco’s death in 1977 writes “The bitterness of the extreme right was apparent in the speeches at today’s rally. Blas Pinar, head of the New Force Party, said: “Forty years of Spanish history were built up by Francisco Franco and this Government has destroyed it in two years.”
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When digging into Franco’s death, I found article upon article upon article in the New York Times, going back decades, reporting on his state of health, sickness, or definitely-not-sickness.
In the last couple of months before his death, his state was followed so closely that it reached absurd levels; please enjoy this screenshot from the last 10 days of New York Times coverage, and feel free to scroll through decades of their coverage on his health here.
Then, upon his death, we get this report from the Times:
General Franco died after a tenacious five‐week battle during which he was repeatedly described as showing unexpected strength. In the final medical bulletin a team of 32 doctors, who had resorted to extraordinary measures, including three operations and reduced body temperature, to keep their patient alive, indicated that they had continued to seek to revive him to the last.
The final clinical diagnosis included Parkinson’s disease, acute miocardial infarction, acute digestive ulcers with repeated massive hemorrhaging, peritonitis, acute kidney failure, thrombophlebitis of the left thigh, bronchial pneumonia and shock.
This is some wild-ass medical shit going on, and I go into it so deeply to point out that nobody insists on doctors doing this kind of desperate shit unless they are really, really afraid of what will happen when the person in question dies.
These are the actions of people who know they don’t have it all tied down.
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So absurd was the reporting on Franco’s ‘long battle’ (and the battle itself…) that Chevy Chase famously joked about it on the December 13th episode of Saturday Night Live (then in its first season), saying, in Weekend Update (three weeks after Franco’s death): “Our top story tonight: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” Chase expanded on the joke for several weeks afterward and it later became a catchphrase with its own wikipedia entry.
“Forty-five years later,” wrote Faber in 2021, “the SNL skit has lost little of its punch, or for that matter, relevance. Franco is still dead, of course; but he also continues to be held in contempt, to garner praise, and to dominate the headlines.” 4
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I give you this very long story about Franco for three reasons:
First, as a reminder that the study of history matters:
History matters now more than ever, and we do not have to leave it only to historians, students, or miscellaneous ‘history buffs’.
I am not a historian, a student, or a history buff. But I got interested in something and I did a little research, for which I used zero AI, by the way, and I learned some interesting things. Wikipedia, newspaper archives, and paper books from libraries are all free access to history. Reference librarians still exist, for now. Professors still exist, for now. Access to history, our own and others’ is still possible. We must ensure it remains so.
Second, as a hopeful example:
Franco’s fascist dictatorship fell and, as the rightists complained, was almost completely dismantled in the two years after his death, in part because he did not have an appropriate successor in place.
Donald Trump’s fascist dictatorship is NOT fully consolidated, and he has no obvious successor. Bannon is desperate to consolidate power NOW because he knows there is only a slim window of time to do so.
He knows, in other words, that it is not “all tied down”.
Third, as instruction:
Donald Trump will die, as all men do. It might be soon. It might be while he is still in office. Those of us opposing fascist rule must continue to HOLD THE LINE against them; refuse to let them consolidate their power. And when Trump does die, we must be prepared to seize that moment as the opposition in Spain was prepared to seize the moment of Franco’s death. One way that ordinary people can seize the moment is in celebration.
So keep that bubbly on ice, people.
Unfortunately, if Franco is any model, Trump’s death will not mean we will get to stop hearing about Donald Trump. We will all be stuck hearing about Donald Trump for the rest of our lives, because there will be no escaping his grotesque legacy. Indeed, we should insist on continuing to talk about Donald Trump, even as we can’t stand to hear his name, because if we stop talking about Donald Trump, we will lose access to an incredibly important piece of our history, and when someone with his level of charisma and tendency toward fascism pops up again, we will be unprepared.
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In conclusion: celebration is important, even if the future remains, as it always is (and I give thanks for that!), undetermined. Like all men, Donald Trump will die, and when he dies we should celebrate, and if we have not already overcome his fascist government, we should recognize it as an auspicious opportunity to do so. We should be ready for this. And, because he has no successor and because he is in ill health, WE MUST HOLD THE DAMN LINE now.
Also GO ZOHRAN! The other day, high off his victory, I finally joined the Democratic Socialists of America, after years of not quite wanting to because I objected to this or that about them. The DSA is running the candidates most aligned with my own values, within the two party system, and sometimes those candidates win.
Last remark: when I talk about Trump’s death, I am explicitly and only talking about the fact that he is an old man with health problems, and old men die of old age, eventually. That’s it. Saying that I will celebrate when he dies of old age is not a celebration of political violence. It’s a celebration of bad people finally dying and being endlessly chewed up and shat out of Satan’s asshole.
If anyone feels like illustrating this vision for me, sans AI, I will pay.
PS: It took me many, many hours of research and thinking and writing to come up with this issue, and I stuck with it because I felt I had something really important to say and because I think being willing and able to struggle through learning and thinking and writing is so critical. If you appreciated this effort and you can afford to, I would appreciate it if you donated to a food bank or food pantry near you. Thanks!
From the book Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition, by SEBASTIAAN FABER, Vanderbilt University Press, 2021, p. 2
Side note: all Massachusetts residents can get Boston Public Library cards, you don’t need to live in the city of Boston. Anyone who lives near a major city library may consider checking their policies too. Libraries need to be used! Support our libraries!
Exhuming Franco, p.27