Accustomed to talking about what opens newspapers, it’s time to talk about what doesn’t, about those dilemmas that remain in the margins without hardly anyone remembering them, about the periphery of the periphery, because, be careful, they matter, and the The question is when they will end up being noticed.
The signs that secondary news may end up being the main one by the end of the year are increasing. It happens during the war in Ukraine. It also happens in those of the climate crisis.
In Ukraine, for example, the front lines barely move and the newspapers do not open with their last hour, but beyond the thousands of dead and millions of displaced people on the ground, the East-West tension is moving, as in times of the cold war, to space, where it is least seen.
“Russia challenges the West from low orbit,” it is summarized. And Moscow is threatening to leave one of the few multinational projects still in place with the US, Europe, Canada and Japan: the International Space Station. And its sector is what prevents it from losing height: “Who will save it [without us] from an uncontrolled exit from orbit or a fall over the US or Europe?”, one reads.
Exaggeration? We will see. There are doubts. But 2024 is key here. And it’s just around the corner.
The final months of 2023, in addition, aim to put on the table another issue that seemed forgotten: access to what is, for many, essential cereals of Ukrainian origin.
Everyone drinks from a map, the one that follows:
Russia rejects renewing the agreement for its passage through the Black Sea. The alternative route is increasingly in the ports next to the border with the European Union along with Romania. And Izmail and Reni have already been attacked. And its alternative to the north has left this headline in recent days: “Poland cuts its arms supply to Kyiv” since “Warsaw accuses its cereal of harming Polish farmers due to its price.”
How long can you last without it?
They are cold sweats over news that, when presented at the same time, sounds like a blockade and moves towards the foreground.
The same thing that happens, for example, when uniting small conflicts in the world. And without today being the world of the 19th century and its empires, comparing the map of then with the one of now (as the previous image does) and its disputes between territories, highlights – as Ukraine does and suffers – that they resist old spheres of influence that refuse to disappear.
Or that they come back.
The climate crisis, finally, has long brought warnings of havoc in the medium-long term. But in the case of the Mediterranean, putting the latest news one after the other together, they go from being a footnote to becoming a serious warning for sailors.
The data, in brief:
-The sea warms three to five times faster than others.
-The sea level rises even in the forecast of the best scenarios.
-The advance of invasive species is constant.
-So many plastic bottles poured into the water will soon make it possible for there to be more bottles than fish in the sea.
The disaster that can now be touched is waters converted into the largest cemetery in the world due to the drama of migrants drowned in their transit to Europe. Now it aims to go even further.
Also because the last earthquake in Morocco, with thousands of fatalities, seen in historical perspective, shows that these earthquakes accumulate very close to the border area with the Peninsula.
The danger is seen far away. On the map it is not so much.
Otherwise, at this point in the calendar, almost everything is politics. The investiture still has to be tied. And just a few days from now, next Tuesday and Wednesday, the debate of the popular candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo will take place.
Except for more than a capital surprise, it seems doomed to failure.
Assembling a majority is difficult. For all. It is worth not forgetting, however, that it is about electoral arithmetic, about adding seats until we have an absolute majority that draws on an electoral system that could very well be another. What’s more: if it were the Dutch, Sánchez would already govern; and if it were the Greek, this would be the case for Feijóo.
In both scenarios, the territory is key and the relevance given to it on the path to investiture is then understood. Spain could not be different.