The “good people” that Alberto Núñez Feijóo launched into the public debate triumphs among his political adversaries. Pedro Sánchez does not stop asking him to specify who he is referring to while he discredits the concept by calling the list of those who will never be able to be part of that select club. Years ago, La Cubana premiered the musical Gente bien, but the lack of a preposition added sequins and established a more marked image. In Barcelona they would be posh. In Madrid, cayetanos. Feijóo, on the other hand, alludes to an indefinite group, without aesthetic marks or clear origin. The good people.
With so few data, it was not easy to locate a specimen that responded to the category underlined by the feijoada. I spent the week searching for someone to fit the role among my friends, acquaintances, and greets. I analyzed prominent figures from the world of politics, sports, culture… I even turned to fictional characters to complete my search: the ineffable Father Brown? The maid Félicité that Flaubert describes in A Simple Heart?
In the end I located an indisputable example at the Teatre Lliure de Montjuïc. His name is Joe Keller and he stars in one of Arthur Miller’s best works: Tots were fills meus. In David Selvas’s production, he is excellently embodied by the actor Jordi Bosch. Keller is a manufacturer of airplane parts that, during World War II, supplies defective material to the army, causing the death of many young soldiers. The good man manages to dodge the sentence by charging the owl to a faint-hearted partner and enriches himself after the allied victory. Anyone who has ever seen this intense piece by Miller will know that Keller is an unbeatable example of the “good people” that Feijóo defends, in the subvariant “man of benefit”.
Every country has its share of respectable do-gooders, with an irrepressible tendency to impose their criteria, ban what they don’t like, and look the other way when some flagrant injustice may jeopardize their position. Charming and triumphant, they are the heroes of silence, capable of enduring whatever it takes in the name of a fictitious respectability that opens the doors to the heaven of Carrero Blanco.