Every time a senior manager of Barça leaves the position, usually due to irreconcilable differences with the president, the parties tend to make up the true reasons for the divorce. Jaume Giró, who joined the Laporta candidacy with the aim of controlling the organization’s finances, jumped before joining the board. It was said that it was for “personal reasons”, but there were greater causes, such as the presence on the board of other people with the means to influence the accounts.
When Ferran Reverter, general manager, left the club, it was said that he was leaving for “family reasons”. But behind this was the disagreement with Laporta regarding Messi’s departure (by the way, there is now speculation about his return). And when at the beginning of this month Mateu Alemany, director of football at Barça, was the one who touched the two, it was said that he had an inescapable offer from Aston Villa, when what there were were differences with the board, since it is not easy to enhance the team’s competitiveness while reducing the wage bill (however Alemany has finally decided to stay).
What is the purpose of these half-truths? Save the forms? Have partners in limbo? Take them for fools? Concealment is sometimes acceptable, especially if it occurs in a forced or exceptional manner. But to practice it continuously is equivalent to putting a lot of bar on it and telling the suffering fans the following: you are already so used to seeing it in all colors that we will not spare in euphemisms.
Some of the words that start with the Greek prefix eu , which means good or good, almost make our day. Starting with euphemism, which comes from euphemós (one who speaks well and avoids bad taste words), continuing with euphoria (a high degree of well-being) and ending with euthanasia (serene death, without suffering). It is also true that other words with the same prefix are not so funny: eunuch, for example.
I started by talking about Barça not because I hate it, but because it provided me with recent illustrations of the theme that motivates these lines. But he could have turned to other sources. For example, to any political party when it boasts of self-proclaimed successes; to any schoolboy when he presents to his parents the qualifications that could be improved, or to any religious congregation when he finally comes to admit the abuses perpetrated within him. In these and other cases, what has happened must always seem less serious than it was. It is, in general, to gild the pill, and if it is necessary to resort to the concealment of the truth and the massive use of euphemism, it is resorted to and ready. Everything seems to go well on these occasions, except to call it quits.
In the current conjuncture, therefore, some seem to want to preserve their particular position and, to do so, avoid any transparency, to avoid being harmed by their own excesses or deficits. Meanwhile, others, raising the flag of minorities and groups subjected to historical penalties, prevent their peers from using expressions that in their opinion may be offensive to such groups. In this way, both defend the baseless idea that what is being talked about, and what is being talked about more with funnels than with precision, can be controlled or contribute to correcting historical injustices.
We are not doing well. This last idea is also false. As the euphemisms passed around end up being. By continuing this restrictive procedure, we can rather achieve the opposite: that instead of not talking about things as they are, however hard it may be for exquisite sensibilities, we may end up turning people into unsuspecting beings, blind to the abyss vital and propitiatory victims of all kinds of abuse. When that day comes, we will have become naive and unarmed types.
While waiting for that to happen, they are already treating us like we are baboons. Because there is a small step from euphemism to hair loss. It’s been decades since we started taking this step: it seems recent, but political correctness emerged more than thirty years ago, and it’s here to stay, until it’s reversed.
