Some time ago I assumed that I am a boomer (vintage of 1961, why hide…) and as such, and even though by age I did not have to vote for the Constitution, I must be part of what is now called the regime of 78, which those of me in my country prefer to call simply democracy, because even today it seems to us an exceptional time in the stormy history of Spain of the 19th and 20th centuries.
We often forget that, among the twists and turns of that history full of civil wars, riots, uprisings, coups, dictatorships and soft dictators, exiles and attacks, this country decreed women’s suffrage years before France, for example. In short, it is just a sample button between the advances and setbacks of a nation that from time to time denies itself or rejects part of its citizens.
Afrancesados, agnostics, free thinkers, women suffragettes or simple cohabitants without going through the sacristy were anathematized in a society where each conquest was achieved with serious risk of reaction.
It will be because of my generation and because of everything that one carries on top of me, that this mendacious and dog-faced electoral campaign has hurt me so much. Again civil war in vein. And in July, so that the weather accompanies and further exasperates the already very heated spirits.
This one today, what do you want me to tell you, is an idle article. The columnist knows that it will be published on election Sunday, so he can tell them little except that: that it is time for the general elections and that they are going to vote, even blank if no one convinces them, or against whomever they least support – another very topical sport – or with the metaphorical and cliché clip on the nose, but vote, show that we still believe in representative and parliamentary democracy, no matter how battered it is throughout the West.
We have experienced and heard so much anti-politics in recent years that we have forgotten the importance of going to vote and that among all of us we decide a government, that is, a program and not just, as it seems today, a future president of the government. In part, that discourse that says that voting is useless and that democracy is kidnapped by political parties and their quotas of power has triumphed. You know, we live in a partocracy that is a kleptocracy. So it’s better that everything burn, as the extremists of very varied sign, motivation and fur want.
And yet, today should be a day for a celebration that is both intimate and collective. No, I am not going to bore you with the democracy party, but with the small or large commitment of the citizen who decides to participate with his vote in the political discussion. Voting is always better than shouting… And of course, the decree law has been abused for decades and parliamentarianism and institutions are being degraded (the General Council of the Judiciary cries out to heaven), but none of this is an excuse for passive abstention, to stay on the sidelines.
Many years ago, in my youth, a tribal chant was often sung at rallies and stadiums. People jumped in unison shouting “To the boat, to the boat!” to add some very pejorative insult and make it clear that it was XXX who didn’t bounce. A couplet that in Catalan took, because of the metric, the form of three imprecations: “Boti, boti, boti…”. Today it seems that this primary cry encourages us to get on the lifeboat of the polls, in which we are all embarked and in which we will have to row, whoever is the helmsman, so: Vote, citizens!
