Pat McArt was in Mojacar for a 20-minute stroll last Wednesday when the town’s accent mix caught his ear. The former Derry Journal editor, author and commentator said he and his wife heard mostly German, Scandinavian or Belgian voices in the southern Spanish resort where British visitors once dominated.
A couple of hours later, well after midnight, McArt was on a balcony talking to Martina, a 60-year-old American from New Mexico, and the conversation quickly turned from travel to politics. Martina said she and her husband, who is of Mexican descent, were house-hunting and planning to move permanently to Spain, not enjoying a holiday but looking for a new life.
Her reason was blunt. “America is full of hate now. Everything is changed,” she said, adding that racism is now out in the open. “We are not going to live the rest of our lives in a culture like that. Not a chance.”
Martina and her husband are relatively wealthy, McArt said, but the move was not about comfort or scenery. It was about leaving what she sees as an increasingly hostile country at a time when the political argument in the United States has become intensely personal for people like her. McArt said many Americans detest Trump far more than people in his own environment do, and that for Americans the issue is deeply personal.
McArt linked the changing sound of Mojacar itself to broader shifts in Europe. Years ago, he said, the town was full of British visitors and signs offering fish and chips or Full English Breakfast for £3.99 were everywhere. Last Wednesday, he found something different: a resort where the old English-language markers had faded and the mix of visitors had changed.
That backdrop framed Martina’s anger when the discussion turned to the president. “Don’t even talk to me about that man,” she said before criticizing Trump over a recent post about Pope Leo and an image in which he was depicted Christ-like. “It was disgraceful. I am ashamed to say that we have a vulgar moron as president. He has no respect for anyone.”
For Martina, the move to Spain is no longer a fantasy or a second-home plan. It is an exit from a country she believes has changed beyond recognition, and from a political culture she says she no longer wants to live under.
