Juan José Ponce Vázquez's Avatar

Juan José Ponce Vázquez

@jjponcevazquez

Historian, sevillano, and USian. Spain, LatAm, Caribe & Atlantic. Opinions are my own. Author of Islanders and Empire. He/Him/Él. Nick Fury of the Spanish Bureaucratic Legal Universe.

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Latest posts by Juan José Ponce Vázquez @jjponcevazquez

My school district is being forced to lay off several educators and a librarian because of a $500,000 budget gap, or roughly the amount spent on the war while I was typing this post.

06.03.2026 12:40 👍 932 🔁 256 💬 6 📌 2

Unsurprising

06.03.2026 03:26 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The Massachusetts Department of Correction has been fighting me for months, trying to withhold data about its collaboration with ICE.

Yesterday, I won that fight, and obtained records showing that the state has transferred more than 2,000 people into ICE custody since 2009.

A quick thread:

04.03.2026 16:01 👍 1814 🔁 723 💬 17 📌 35

The political reality is that he cannot win, that his government is a Frankenstein of leftists and nationalists that realized that it would be a lot worse with the extreme right in power. I’m not sure he will be able to repeat it in the next elections.

04.03.2026 23:25 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

It is one of the few center left governments left in Europe, so in that sense, he is all we have left with a semblance of progressivism

04.03.2026 23:21 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Im not a fan el perro, but you have to concede the fact that he is very smart. Mariano is incapable of speaking of anything other than soccer.

04.03.2026 23:20 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

100%. The framing is just bizarre

04.03.2026 21:29 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Preview
Spain’s Leader, Rejecting Iran War, Escalates Long Feud With Trump

El perro keeping things consistent.

I am also surprised that is not saying anything about how this is coming after the German PM threw Spain under the bus while visiting Trump in the White House. What a sorry spectacle.
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/w...

04.03.2026 20:55 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
Preview
Feijóo, tras el "no a la guerra" de Sánchez: "La relación con los EEUU debe preservarse" El líder del PP evita criticar los bombardeos ilegales de EEUU e Israel a Irán, y lamenta que el Gobierno se plante ante Trump: "España está más aislada internacionalmente que nunca. España no es fiab...

El servilismo de la derecha española a los Estados Unidos es bochornoso.

“Feijóo, tras el "no a la guerra" de Sánchez: "La relación con los EEUU debe preservarse"” vía @eldiarioes www.eldiario.es/1_c6f48d

04.03.2026 20:32 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I am just doing the job to the best of my ability.

04.03.2026 14:46 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I don’t have any kind of power among people with money to buy others coffee. I know, it’s a hell of a position.

04.03.2026 13:03 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

It certainly does.

04.03.2026 04:18 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I do talk about Pirates of the Caribbean in my talk. It’s unavoidable, because it’s still the main pirate reference for anyone under 40.

04.03.2026 01:55 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

😂

04.03.2026 00:05 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Well if someone has administrative ambitions, it’s certainly the first step.

04.03.2026 00:05 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

If they are not even paying the department chair more money, that is truly beyond the pale.

03.03.2026 21:04 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Thank you brother.

03.03.2026 18:29 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

People still congratulate me when i tell them I’m Director of Graduate Studies. If you find yourself in that situation, I have a pro tip for you: if you have to do a lot more work for the same pay, it’s not really a promotion.

03.03.2026 18:28 👍 242 🔁 15 💬 7 📌 2

Yes. The Caribbean pirates are the ones with which people are obsessed to the detriment of all others.

02.03.2026 20:21 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Careful. Drake was never a buccaneer. That is part of the talk 🙃

02.03.2026 19:28 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I have been teaching a course in Caribbean pirates and representations of piracy in popular cultures for years. This presentation was born out of this class.

02.03.2026 19:22 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

If you think this is something your students would find instructive and enjoyable, please do not hesitate to reach out. I would love to come to your campus and talk about Caribbean pirates, the real ones and the imaginary ones.

02.03.2026 19:20 👍 9 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

My hope is to entertain an audience while letting them understand how to stereotypes of "pirates"as we see them represented in popular culture came to be.

02.03.2026 19:20 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I have developed a presentation titled "The Real Pirates of the Caribbean, and Why We Think We Love Them." I do a very quick pass to the history of Caribbean piracy, and then I jumped on to talk about representations of pirates in British literature and Hollywood films.

02.03.2026 19:20 👍 14 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0

Do you like Caribbean pirates? Everyone does (myself included), but most people don't really know why. Why have we come to love characterizations of individuals who were so violent and brutal?

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

02.03.2026 19:20 👍 18 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 1

I know these are dark times but I am delighted that Scrubs is back and I will not apologize.

02.03.2026 18:26 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Doing the pinewood derby with my kids right now, and it’s evident we will never be able to compete against the children of the guy who has a workshop for a living. 😅

01.03.2026 21:50 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Pedid tierra y libertad. Sea por Andalucía libre, España y la humanidad.

Feliz día andaluces

#diadeandalucia

28.02.2026 13:59 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I completely agree. I have learned the hard way. I’m not super consistent, it getting better

28.02.2026 04:15 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Also because we are a bunch of dumbasses. Pardon my French.

28.02.2026 03:56 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0