In the midst of the crossfire between the two (three, infinite) Spains, a little sentimental sugar won’t hurt. It always seems that polarization can go no further, but always the flames of tremendism grow a little brighter and higher. This is why syrup, no matter how sugary it is, cannot be despised so easily. It has no political vitamin, but it sweetens the poor hope, so abused. I am referring to the syrup distributed by Begoña Villacís, until now deputy mayor of the Madrid City Council for Ciutadans, in her farewell speech.
As you probably know, Villacís repeatedly praised his rivals. In a sweetly tongue-in-cheek tone, he said he would devote the speech to publicizing the embarrassments of his fellow legislators. And these shames turned out to be virtues.
He knew how to show positive qualities of all opponents. He revealed that one rival was very much loved by all the councilors, that another was an outlier, that a third was so passionate about the things of the city that he could not disconnect from them. He congratulated a socialist for the good campaign; of a parliamentarian from the mixed group, she stated that she “always tells the truth”. He confessed that, at the saddest moment of his political journey, he was comforted by an opponent. Villacís kissed all his rivals. In the land of hydrochloric acid, a little rose perfume can’t hurt.
Throwing florets, it’s called in Catalan. I thought of that Coca-Cola ad from years ago. I liked it, even though it was very syrupy. The protagonist was a boy, son of parents who spend the day fighting. The mother asks the child to reprimand his father for such a thing. And the child, instead of reprimanding the father, tells him nice words from the mother. On another occasion, things go the other way around and, instead of conveying an aggressive message, the child conveys a loving phrase. The three of them end up kissing and drinking Coca-Cola.
Yes, it was a cheesy, cheesy ad. Ideal to motivate all these mockers of today, who practice a humor that seems to be born in the acid of a stomach ulcer. But when the bad moon, the sarcasm, the insult, the shouting and the exaggerations place our politics on the rhetorical threshold of the civil war, it is appreciated that a professional of the public affairs has the grace to speak badly of her colleagues of profession appealing to its virtues and leaving, for a moment, its defects.
Villacís ended the speech with a description of the relations between parties. “Politicians – he said – talk better behind their backs than to their faces”. To be sure, they always call each other the pig’s name, although, often clandestinely, they are able to forge friendships. Why should this friendship be lived as a shame if what is truly shameful, in addition to being toxic and irritating, is this incessant, hydrochloric, poisonous hatred that is manufactured in public?
An example, to finish. After many years of toxicity and confrontations, in Valencia, already in Zaplana’s time, a solution that was both satisfactory and plausible for the various Valencian sensibilities around the indigenous language, the same one we speak in Catalan and Balearic, began to be woven. That subtle, delicate and laborious fabric took a long time to complete. I know it was possible thanks to a network of positive personal relationships. Will politics return to set fire to what has taken so much time to weave?
