How well it would have been for Liz Truss if at the most decisive moment of her political career she had known how to say no. “No, I don’t want to be the UK Prime Minister.” If 47 days ago that had been her decision, today she would not be seen in memes next to a lettuce that in the end has survived more days than her. The world we live in has turned that lettuce into a global celebrity, the Pop octopus of our days in a vegetable version. I imagine the rage of the Spanish tabloids, that there are, for not having invented something similar with our president: “Who will last longer, Pedro Sánchez or this melon?” Although in that case the melon would rot, given Sánchez’s demonstrated capacity for resistance, which begins to scare Feijóo himself. Observe the face that is being put on the conservative leader lately.
The wise say that you are worth more for your nos than for your yeses. That the hard thing in life is saying no. That is why I find admirable what Salvador Salvadó, mayor of Siurana (Priorat), has done. According to this newspaper, Salvadó has rejected that his municipality be added to the list of Most Beautiful Towns in Spain, an award granted by an association of the same name. What mayor would refuse such a privilege? Well, this one, that he has thought that a distinction like that was a poisoned gift for Siurana, and that he could make his town die of success due to excess of visitors. Like if you win a miss or mister wet t-shirt contest and reject it because you don’t feel like putting up with slobbers.
Admirable not that of the mayor of ERC, disfigured by the opposition (of Junts, of course), who has renounced glory in the ranking society, where the one who is in the top is rewarded. If not, you are a failure. I am lucky to know Siurana since I was little. My family spends the summer in Alforja, a village in Baix Camp almost on the border with Priorat. The annual visit to Siurana has been a mandatory appointment, the town where you took your relatives, your friends, your girlfriends, to show them that this was a paradise yet to be discovered. The last visits were no longer so idyllic due to the multitude of tourists who also wanted to know, and rightfully so, paradise. Siurana was already about to die of success, and an award such as the Most Beautiful Town in Spain would have given it the finishing touch.
Siurana has never been easily won over. In the 12th century, it was the last stronghold in the area to be taken by Christian troops. Its location made it easy. Accessing Siurana in the middle ages did not have to be easy, given the remote location in which it is located. Legend has it that it was there that the Moorish queen Abdelazia decided to end her life before seeing her people subjugated by the Christians. She mounted on her white horse, she jumped into the void over a cliff so as not to fall prisoner of the enemy.
Something of character must have imprinted that legend on the current mayor, who is not letting himself be conquered now by the tourist troops. The mayor has said no to overcrowding, no to more income, risking not being applauded. In return, he wants to keep the place quiet. He knows that the rival is not small. I imagine him surrounded by hordes of tourists gaining positions, and the mayor, in a dead end, ending up in the same Salto de la Reina Mora, and falling into the void on the back of his horse, and holding Liz Truss’s hand, that she never wants power to seduce her again. Then it would be some tourist who, unintentionally, would fall into the void while taking a selfie at the scene of the events, and lose his life and, above all, the likes they were going to give him.
