SOLDIERS ON THE STREETS

My friend Charles B. Moreland (1931–2006) came to Madrid in 1954, planning to stay a year to improve his Spanish. I was still a boy, yet we had long conversations in both English and Spanish about Spain and the United States. One remark of his has never left me: he was astonished by the sheer number of uniforms on the streets. Police and soldiers patrolled Madrid under the dictatorship, something he found extraordinary compared with what he knew in Dormont and Pittsburgh.

I wonder what Charley would say now, in 2025, seeing the streets of Los Angeles or Washington patrolled by the National Guard.