Author: VD

TRANSLATION: Cádiz

The eighth volume of the Episodios Nacionales, the great historical novel cycle of Spain, Cádiz carries Gabriel Araceli into the besieged island city where Spain’s first constitution is being born, and where a drawing-room intrigue will end in blood on the sand.

It is 1810, and Cádiz is the last free city in Spain. While French cannon fire arcs across the bay and the newly convened Cortes debates sovereignty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of feudal lordships, Gabriel finds himself entangled in a world of tertulias and domestic politics more dangerous than any battlefield. The condesa Amaranta needs his help to recover her secret daughter, Inés, from the household of the formidable doña María de Rumblar, a Catholic absolutist matriarch who has imprisoned the girl behind the walls of a household so rigidly governed it resembles a convent. To reach Inés, Gabriel must navigate a social minefield: the effusive doña Flora, whose speeches are torrents of self-interruption and genuine warmth; the feckless young Count Don Diego, who is supposed to marry Inés for family advantage; and the absurd Don Pedro del Congosto, commander of a militia so magnificently incompetent that its members are named after parrots and peacocks.

At the centre of everything is Lord Gray, a brilliant, melancholic Englishman who delivers dazzling speeches against his own country, joins the beggars at the Carmen convent for the philosophical experience, and quotes Byron while systematically destroying the people around him. Gabriel believes Lord Gray is pursuing Inés. He is wrong. The truth, when it comes, is worse than anything Gabriel has imagined.

The Episodios Nacionales is a cycle of forty-six historical novels tracing the history of Spain from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 through the Restoration of the 1870s. Written between 1872 and 1912, the cycle is one of the supreme achievements of European fiction — a work that stands with Balzac’s Comédie Humaine and Trollope’s Palliser and Barchester novels as a panoramic portrait of an entire nation across a century of upheaval. This is the first complete English translation of the eighth volume.

CÁDIZ by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the eighth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook. An excerpt is available at Castalia Library.

An Apology

Stephen A. Smith publicly apologized to Kyrie Irving yesterday.

“When it comes to Kyrie Irving, I can’t apologize strongly enough,” Smith said.

The ESPN star admitted he didn’t want to take the vaccine either but did because his job and livelihood could have been threatened. Athletes like Irving, Aaron Rodgers, and Novak Djokovic were ridiculed for refusing.

“I looked at it as being selfish,” Smith said on his show. “And I watched Dr. Fauci on Capitol Hill yesterday. And the person I thought about most was Kyrie Irving.”

Irving refused vaccination at the time and missed 53 games as a member of the Brooklyn Nets under New York City’s vaccine mandate. The Nets banned him for 35 home games before eventually allowing Irving to play on the road. Since Irving missed so many games, the Nets revoked an extension offer valued at over $100 million. Reports suggest that Irving missed out on $300k per game he sat out.

Smith then brought up his own battle with COVID-19 and shared that the virus nearly killed him. The ESPN personality was in the emergency room before New Year’s 2022 with double pneumonia. Smith not only flipped his opinion on Irving but also called him brave for his stance.

“It didn’t make him stubborn or selfish,” Smith said. “It made him brave. “It turns out that no matter what the truth is behind all of this, Kyrie Irving did nobody wrong. We did him wrong. I did him wrong. And for that, I’m sincerely sorry.”

There are a lot of people who are owed apologies. Not me, because I was fortunate in that my immediate family was 100 percent in accord with my absolute rejection of the vaxx and even my friends who got vaxxed were entirely respectful of my

But for all of you who suffered for your refusal to submit to the global psyop, go ahead and take a private mental victory lap. You have been vindicated. You were right all along. You did the right thing. And never again will you feel the same sort of social pressure on you, even when Clown World tries something similar again, because now you know that you not only can stand against it, but you must do so in order to show others that they can too.

And full credit to Stephen A. Smith for being brave enough to do what very, very few public figures are willing to do, and admit in front of everyone that he was wrong.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Aerial Blockade of Odessa

I’ve always thought Odessa is Russia’s primary objective. And now they’re using 5GW to enforce an aerial blockade of Ukraine’s most important ports, including Odessa:

I just returned from Odesa, where an unprecedented Russian aerial offensive has completely blocked Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, threatening an economic disaster that, at the moment, appears underestimated by international media. In the city, one witnesses paradoxical scenes, with Russian drones and missiles flying over beaches full of swimmers, or being shot down off the coast, in view of thousands of smartphones pointed at the sky.

For about ten days now, Moscow has begun systematically targeting all vessels approaching the port, with no regard for nationality. Now, neither captains nor shipowners dare to approach the three major Ukrainian ports: Odessa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdenny.

For Ukrainian farmers, it risks being a disaster. With exports blocked at the peak of the harvest season, their warehouses are overflowing, and agricultural commodity prices in the country have collapsed. With the sunflower harvest starting in just a few days, the situation risks becoming critical.

After having been targeted by it for decades, Russia and Iran clearly understand how to wage economic war better than the West.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Revenge of Aaron Rodgers

Steelers’ fans have to love seeing this side of Aaron Rodgers come out on camera. The man hasn’t forgiven, he hasn’t forgotten, and he’s not afraid to take shots at Fauci aka “The Science”.

“Can you tell us about your mindset coming into your last season?” McAfee asked.

The ESPN personality couldn’t have guessed where the four-time NFL MVP was about to take this.

“I’m gonna plead the Fifth,” Rodgers said, as McAfee and the Steelers fans watching at training camp laughed in unison, “like that absolute coward Tony Fauci. Absolute coward. Are you kidding me? You get a pardon and you’re and you pleaded over 100 times at the White House? What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were the science. ‘I am science,’ and you get up there and can’t answer a question? What are we doing?”

Rodgers is referencing an infamous remark by Fauci during a 2021 interview, where he defended his public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying “I am the science.”

Fauci pled the Fifth 111 times during a Senate hearing, on the advice of his attorneys, to answer questions from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. He was questioned over his response to the pandemic and his policy decisions, where the former White House COVID advisor was accused of funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.

Paul argued Fauci using the Fifth Amendment was unsupported because former President Joe Biden, whom Fauci advised during the pandemic, pardoned him. Paul said the committee will vote this week on a resolution to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

“Spending the entire time writing in his diary about how fun it is to be famous. You gotta be kidding me,” Rodgers’ diatribe continued. “What are you going to say about me now? Seriously, what are they going to say about me now? Now, you can’t talk about the COVID stuff because obviously it was made in a lab in China. That’s like not even questionable anymore. Tony Fauci is an absolute criminal. It’s been a great life and a great career, and it’s nice to be sitting on this side now especially after that coward pled the Fifth over 100 times. I thought you had a pardon there, Tony. Why couldn’t you answer one question the entire time?”

But Rodgers wasn’t just airing out his grievances with Fauci, which he’s had many since the days of the pandemic. He pointed the finger directly at the network he was being interviewed on. No matter how McAfee and his supporting cast tried to get the conversation back on track, Rodgers took aim at ESPN, the sports network giant which airs “The Pat McAfee Show” daily.

Rodgers was vilified for his own 2021 COVID saga, where his “immunized” remark in August, months prior to testing positive for COVID-19 in November of that season, led to immediate backlash in the media.

“How much time did the network spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week? On my vaccination status? On Taylor’s [Swift] and Travis’ [Kelce] wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? No, I bet they didn’t,” Rodgers said on Monday.

Rodgers even brought up the Dianna Russini scandal and the lack of coverage from ESPN with it. Russini, who worked for ESPN before joining The Athletic, was entrenched in a scandal as an inappropriate relationship with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was exposed this offseason, ultimately leading to her exit from The Athletic and Vrabel leaving the Patriots during the NFL Draft to enter counseling.

There are a lot of people who would like to sweep their words and actions during the fake Covid crisis under the carpet. No one should permit them to do so. Rodgers clearly throws rhetorical bombs with the same degree of accuracy he throws the football.

DISCUSS ON SG

It’s Not Just the Finns

The entire European governing elite is desperate to redirect the very understandable popular fury generated by their misrule at Russia. They’ve clearly observed how Zelensky has managed to cancel elections and cling to power by sacrificing millions of Ukrainian men who would otherwise have driven him and his regime from power:

The Finnish elite wants a war with Russia in order to use it to evade responsibility for their failures in the country’s politics, Ano Turtiainen, a former member of the Finnish parliament and founder of the Power Belongs to the People party, told RIA Novosti.
“Everything related to EU, by entering into NATO, – all this was done illegally, bypassing the constitution… Now the Finnish elite is afraid that they will have to answer for all this, and therefore they even want war (with Russia – ed.) in order to avoid responsibility with its help,” said Turtiainen, who moved to Russia.

He noted that relations with Russia need to be restored, but after that it is necessary to take responsibility for failures in Finnish politics, and this is the most important problem of modern Finland. Turtiainen was a member of the Parliament of Finland from 2019 to 2023. In 2021, he was expelled from the True Finns party and founded the Power Belongs to the People party, which advocated maintaining relations with Russia and against Finland’s entry into NATO. At the end of 2025, the politician and his wife moved to the Russian Federation and received refugee status.

Accountability for their actions is always the number one fear of people in positions of influence, power, and authority once the consequences of their terrible policies can no longer be denied. And almost everywhere but China and Russia, it is clear that the principles and policies that everyone once believed were a) inevitable and b) eternal have proven to be complete and utter failures in every society that adopted them.

Which is why we’re going to see everything from wars to aliens to apocalypses to climate change catastrophes to democratic dictatorships in desperate attempts to avoid accountability. And yet, history teaches that the reckoning will arrive eventually, no matter what the elites do. Clown World is doomed and every single elite clown knows it.

DISCUSS ON SG

An Act of War

Was the USA involved in the recent Islamic invasion of two Spanish enclaves?

The US and Israel orchestrated the mass migrant crossing from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta to punish Madrid for its refusal to bow to pressure on the Middle East conflicts, Iran’s embassy in Kenya has suggested. Spain has been at odds with Washington and West Jerusalem over the Gaza war and strikes on Iran.

Over the past several days, roughly 50,000 to 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta by land and sea in numbers equivalent to some 70% of the enclave’s regular population. The local authorities admitted they had been “completely overwhelmed” by the sudden surge.

The crisis, the largest human traffic invasion in the EU’s history, claimed the lives of at least 86 people, a toll expected to rise further. Many of the victims drowned in the sea or were crushed in the stampede at border checkpoints. On Friday, the Iranian Embassy in Nairobi described the migrant surge as “an operation organized by Washington and Tel Aviv – coordinated with certain neighboring authorities – to destabilize Spain.”

We know Israel was involved as a sponsor. Both the Israeli Ambassador to the UN and the son of the current Prime Minister made that perfectly clear. But this is the first time that it’s been suggested that the USA was involved as well, although Trump did make some weird claims about how this sort of thing would happen in Europe if Republicans lose the mid-term elections.

I just assumed that was Trump doing his usual thing of attempting to jump to the front of every parade, but it’s possible there was more too it than that. If so, things are going to get even weirder than they already are fast.

UPDATE: And it’s more or less confirmed, given the signal that was recently sent by Congress.

House Report 119-631 accompanies the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2027, which the House passed 217 to 209 on 15 July 2026.“The Committee notes that the Spanish-administered cities of Cueta and Melilla are located in Moroccan territory and remain the subject of Morocco’s longstanding claim.”

DISCUSS ON SG

The 2nd Muslim Invasion of Spain

It’s now formally underway. And, of course, the media is still temporizing its coverage with sob stories about the poor migrants who just want a better life in someone else’s nation:

As more mayhem unfolds before me, I would challenge any liberal progressive to witness such troubling scenes and still advocate for open borders.

With migrants lurking with listless boredom on every street corner, in squares, avenues and bridge underpasses, forcing locals to cower in their homes, Ceuta today does not look like anyone’s idea of a utopia.

Tearful Sid didn’t seem much of a threat. But you don’t need to travel far to sense disquiet here.

Some migrants queue outside the small number of shops prepared to serve them. Most don’t want their custom.

Normally on a Saturday the city parks and beaches are alive with families and the sounds of children playing. Apart from the police, the military and a few hardy Spanish souls, the only people visible in Ceuta yesterday were migrants, seemingly from across Africa. For sure, some were friendly, but the locals’ deep unease was understandable.

‘They’ve taken over the city,’ said a police officer. ‘Look around you. It may as well be Morocco because all the Spaniards are indoors.’

If the Spanish people don’t fight back, they will lose their land. Again. And don’t forget that last time, it took them seven centuries to get it back and evict all of the invaders.

I don’t think the second Spanish Inquisition will be as merciful as the first one. And the next Franco isn’t going to be as circumspect as the previous one.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Little Church Music

I usually try to produce a weekly video for AI Central on Saturday, but for various budgetary reasons I wasn’t planning to do one this week. However, a few things came together at the right time, in the right way, so if you’d like to check out a video for a new mix of Book of Ephesians, you can do so at AI Central, as well as learn about the tools and technical details involved.

DISCUSS ON SG

UEFA Rejects Privatization

UEFA and its 55 member associations stand as one. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors.

The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. It is one of football’s greatest sporting legacies. It has been built over generations by players, national teams and supporters across every continent. No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale.

It is both irresponsible and indefensible that a proposal of such significance for football was conceived in secret and brought to the brink of approval without any meaningful consultation with those entrusted with stewarding the game. This is not merely a profound failure of leadership, but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football.

National associations around the world are now presented with an ultimatum: accept the irreversible capture of football’s greatest competitions or bear the consequences. This is not a “democratic decision”, but governance by intimidation – an act of coercion unworthy of an institution entrusted with the stewardship of the global game.

Europe’s position is clear. We will never lend this model our legitimacy. No one has the moral authority to sell what they merely hold in trust for the next generation.

As a result of today’s discussion, no UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership.

The proposal is absolutely absurd. FIFA is astonishingly corrupt, but this is hitting new heights of corruption. UEFA and the other Football Associations are correct to reject it completely.

In other international football news, the Milan family is in mourning. Riposa in pace.

The former Milan and Italy defender Franco Baresi, one of the most recognisable players of the ⁠golden era of Italian football in the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 66. “The entire history of ⁠AC Milan is in ⁠tears following the ​passing of Franco Baresi,” his former club said on Friday. “His example and integrity will be forever etched into the club’s DNA.”

DISCUSS ON SG

Migration is Literally Invasion

For 50 years, the traitors in the West have insisted that immigration is not invasion. And now the inevitable has become undeniable:

Spain has deployed just 60 troops to its North African exclave of Ceuta after thousands of migrants overwhelmed security forces and stormed across the border from Morocco, with up to 30,000 more people reportedly swarming the frontier. The Spanish Interior Ministry said the military contingent consisted of three platoons of 20 soldiers each, sent to reinforce the Guardia Civil after officers admitted that the border had “totally collapsed.” Madrid also dispatched specialized police units, bringing their total number to around 200, as well as 30 additional Guardia Civil officers.

The small military deployment came after Ceuta’s regional government pleaded with Madrid to take “decisive” action, close the border and declare a national emergency, warning that local police, hospitals and migrant reception facilities had been overwhelmed.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government rejected the emergency request, arguing that migration does not qualify under legislation covering natural disasters, major accidents and other national catastrophes.

Of course it doesn’t. It’s war. Migrants and refugees should be met with military force at the border, or they will wage war on the native population. This is a larger invasion than the original one from North Africa that led to 700 years of Muslim occupation.

UPDATE: the invading force is up to 49,000 strong and they’re pillaging the towns.

Terrifying footage showed scores of people seemingly breaking into homes across the city late at night. One clip appeared to show a man on top of a ladder, hitting a first-floor window with an object. After migrants flooded into the city, many local shops chose to close early. Enrique Serrano, who runs a women’s clothing store in central Ceuta, told Reuters business owners were organising self-defence because they believed police resources would be insufficient.

UPDATE: Finland has joined Italy and Denmark in calling for Spain to be removed from the Schengen agreement.

DISCUSS ON SG