Something’s wrong with the rain. It’s been so long since it’s rained that there must be, at least in Barcelona, ??three-year-old boys and girls who don’t know what the hell those drops could be that, according to their parents, supposedly fall from the sky and make you wet, turn the streets in a strange slippery mirror that give us life. And it is so, since there are official advertising campaigns paid for with everyone’s taxes that affirm that, indeed, water does not fall from the sky, just like that, which sounds a bit like the Three Wise Men, but with very bad nonsense. .

But these boys and girls, the day when not a single drop comes out of the kitchen faucet or the shower, a day that is already approaching, would do very well to ask why, especially to those who have been told that the water does not fall. from the sky. Because if it doesn’t fall from the sky, the creatures will think, where on earth does it come from. And if neither their parents, nor their teachers, nor the politicians, who have told them that water does not fall from the sky, do not know how to answer them, then, already thirsty and desperate, they should resort to magic, right? Which is what humanity has been doing throughout history.

In the middle of a drought similar to the one now, in 2008, a chancellor of the Generalitat, a self-confessed agnostic, went to the monastery of Monserrat to pray to the virgin for rain. And it rained. At the beginning of February of this year, the Catalan bishops asked parishioners to intensify their prayers so that it rains once and for all; and in the middle of the same month, the mayor of Barcelona, ??the socialist Jaume Collboni, asked the Poor Clare nuns of the Pedrables monastery to pray to Santa Eulàlia on her saint’s day, which is February 12, so that it would rain, thus breaking a ancient tradition that consists of the nuns praying precisely so that it does not rain, in order not to spoil the many weddings celebrated around these dates.

Now, since it is somewhat clear that, if we continue like this, if we do not stop it, but now, global warming is on its way to destroying us, and probably sooner rather than later. It will not be anything new: there have been many civilizations that have disappeared due to prolonged adverse climatic circumstances, whether due to excess or lack of water. The difference lies in the explanation of the cause.

The Scottish anthropologist J. G Frazer (1854-1941) collected in his monumental work The Golden Bough a few examples, each more insane, of how throughout history and in any corner of the world magic has been used. or prayers so that, in times of drought, it would rain. If by chance it rained, the power of the king and the priests was strengthened; But if, on the contrary, the lack of water persisted, his vassals rebelled, although not necessarily against the authority, which was very dangerous, but they limited themselves to punishing and humiliating the gods or saints who supposedly took care of these tasks.

Now, thanks to modern science, little by little we are finding out the true cause of the tremendous droughts that, even thousands of years ago, ended up causing the sudden fall of entire empires. Back in the year 2300 BC, the drought that devastated the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia was attributed to the emperor having defied the gods. Recent studies explain that it was due to the action of a climatic oscillation in the Atlantic, between the Azores and Iceland.

However, the enormous scientific and technological advances have not helped us much. The climate is changeable, the causes multiple and capricious.

If now it suddenly rains and a lot, it will be, they will tell us, due to divine or administrative intervention, or both, to choose, but if it continues over time, woe to the incompetent and liars who have told the boys and girls that water does not fall from the sky.