Tuesday was Sant Jordi, and today the Fira del Llibre de València opens, the most important cultural event in the city at street level. Suitable climate for books to achieve an unprecedented prominence in the Corts Valencianes yesterday. Because in the control session, the PSPV and Compromís decided to give away several works, two to President Carlos Mazón, and a third to the Minister of Justice, Elisa Núñez, from Vox, protagonist of the week in the Valencian political ecosystem. Only the roses were missing.
The first to perform the gesture was José Muñoz. He justified it with the background that last week, in another control session, Carlos Mazón read two paragraphs of the prologue of A Sangre y Fuego, a magnificent work by that enormous journalist who was Manuel Chaves Nogales. The president turned to the Sevillian teacher to highlight what he wrote about the violence of reds and blacks at the beginning of the Civil War. Yesterday the socialist ombudsman wanted to continue this interesting dialectical game with another book.
This is Fascism, the black shadow of a hundred years of barbarism by Antonio Gramsci, one of the fundamental European intellectuals of the beginning of the last century. José Muñoz gave it to him as a “warning from the partners he has”, in reference to Vox. Carlos Mazón did not hesitate to accept the gift and take it from the hands of the socialist mayor. He wasn’t the only one. In the response time, the socialist representative Mercedes Caballero wanted to emulate the gesture with another book and another person.
This time the lucky one was the Minister of Justice, Elisa Núñez, from Vox, protagonist of the Valencian political week with her statement, and subsequent rectification, about the classification of Francisco Franco as a “dictator.” The book in question is that of the British Hispanist Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, a work that highlights in broad strokes how repression during the war and the post-war period. Caballero also got up from his seat and approached the counselor, who accepted the gift.
There were more. The Compromís deputy Juan Bordera gave another book to Carlos Mazón, a work of which the Valencian is co-author with Antonio Turiel and Fernando Valladares and which is titled The end of the seasons? Reasons for the rebellion of science and degrowth, which addresses the historical cycle in which neoliberalism has acquired prominence as a hegemonic thought.
There were even two books that were cited but were not in the chamber. The first is one by the Valencian journalist Francesc Arabi Ciudadano Zaplana, which was cited by José Muñoz; the second, León’s Machiavelli: what Zapatero is really like, by José García Abad, whose reading was recommended by the Vox ombudsman, José María Llanos.
