In Spain we talk more than we listen. And words have stopped being tools to understand us and have become weapons to hurt us. The bad thing is that in our time they arrive by land, sea and air, like the armies of the 20th century. The most unleashed words impact us on social networks, where there is no brake and where anyone can do as much damage with a phrase as a remote-controlled missile, if the aggressor aims well at the right moment. Ryszard Kapuscinski warned: “Wars never begin with the first shot, but with the change of language.”
No one escapes polarization. It is reckless to turn the other cheek because the easiest thing is to have it broken. Few dare to ask for explanations because doing so only renews the insults. Most parties call for dialogue, when they only listen to their own monologues. The only thing that the right and the left, the crazy and the sane, know is what Juan José Millás warned us about: “Reality is made of words, so whoever dominates the words dominates reality.” It should not be surprising, then, that, from the moment we wake up, words fall from the sky like spikes, ready to leave us speechless rather than without arguments.
José María Aznar yesterday dedicated his speech on the FAES campus to opposing the amnesty and a self-determination referendum, raising the tone of his attacks on Pedro Sánchez. His language was extremely forceful and aggressive. I recover one of his phrases: “There is no State that does not embarrass its citizens in which a fugitive from justice is granted a certificate of nature and it is accepted that a possible government depends on the will of a coup plotter.” The spokesperson for the acting Government, Isabel Rodríguez, was not far behind in responding that whoever lied to the Spanish people repeatedly while in government has no credibility, nor political or moral value. And she wondered if the next thing he will ask for will be an uprising.
The waters of X, formerly Twitter, dropped yesterday full of debris due to this controversy. I remembered the phrase of Marilynne Robinson, Pulizer winner in 2005: “I long for civilization and I want it back.”