Michelle Obama’s sojourn in Spain

What a boost to Spain’s tourism industry, said El Mundo in an editorial. The five-day visit of U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama and her 9-year-old daughter, Sasha, has been fantastic advertising. Hundreds of journalists followed the pair’s every move, from Marbella to Granada to Ronda. We’re grateful that, rather than simply plopping herself down on a beach, Michelle “did not hesitate to star in a comprehensive agenda of cultural visits.” She even paid a gracious visit to the king and queen. Spain was entranced by her “charming personality.”

Little Sasha was impressive, too, said Rafael Martínez-Simancas, also in El Mundo. She trooped off with her mother to monument after monument, “never complaining” about the heat or the crowds. On her brief trip to the beach, she even appeared to enjoy the notoriously rocky shore of Estepona, “as if it were the soft sand of Malibu.” This sweet, smiling girl now deserves a “normal holiday, with a bucket and a spade—and not so much sightseeing.” It was hardly a real vacation for Michelle, either, said José María Carrascal in ABC. Travel should afford “freedom from the shackles of daily life” and the liberty to laze around. But on her visit, Michelle was thronged by “the peasantry” ogling her, complimenting her, offering her gifts. The people couldn’t get enough of her.

Back home, though, Americans were peeved by Michelle’s choice of Spain, said David Alandete in El País. “A legion of U.S. media and blogs, mostly conservative,” ripped into the First Lady for choosing to travel to Europe rather than spending time and taxpayer dollars at, say, a U.S. beach on the Gulf of Mexico, a region desperately in need of tourism in the wake of the BP oil spill disaster. After Michelle was photographed wearing a designer outfit and entering a five-star hotel in Marbella, one columnist in the New York Daily News condemned her as “a modern-day Marie Antoinette,” indulging in luxury while her countrymen suffer. In truth, of course, her trip was no more expensive than most presidential family vacations—and no more criticized. Even back in 1963, for example, Jackie Kennedy was slammed for “leaving her husband in Washington” to sail in the Greek islands.

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Well, here’s a legitimate criticism: Michelle didn’t really visit Spain proper, said the Spanish think-tank GEES in Libertad Digital. She mostly toured Andalusia, the region with the most visible “remains of the Muslim occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.” Evidently she wasn’t interested in any of Spain’s magnificent churches or monasteries, only in Islamic architecture, such as the Alhambra palace in Granada. This “contempt for all cultural heritage of the true nature of Spain” is in perfect keeping with her husband’s “retreat from the core values of the Western world.” President Obama has shown time and again that he prefers “to bow to Islam” and “move America away from its traditional allies” in Europe. Next time the Obamas visit Europe, it might be nice if they acknowledged the continent’s “Judeo-Christian heritage.”