To the vomitous spectacle of the two major Spanish political parties throwing feces at each other (the Koldo case, Ayuso’s boyfriend), we must now add a Catalan campaign that aims to make our lives more complicated, if possible. The comments about the great cunning at play and about tremendous ideological dilemmas return. They call it politics: it is mere tactics. The verbiage these days has no more value than the comments before a football game.
Thanks to the umpteenth electoral advance, many social, economic and cultural programs will have to stop suddenly. Several laws that parliamentarians had negotiated are already in the trash. Among others, the exemplary “law of temporary and urgent measures to confront and eradicate homelessness.” The collapse of this law is especially cruel. Presented more than two years ago, it was not an initiative of parliamentarians, but of five social institutions (Arrels, Assís, Cáritas, Sant’Egidio and Sant Joan de Déu) advised by doctors in Law Aguado, Pitarch, Prado and González.
The vast majority of Catalan parties adhered to the civil proposal and then displayed their great “social sensitivity” to the media. But already at the beginning of 2023 the alarms went off: despite the fact that the proposal was impeccably designed by civil jurists, the processing of the law ran aground. Infuriating slowness. Another year had to pass. And when it seemed that the law was finally entering the exit ramp, the electoral call has ruined all efforts, including a collective book, Sensellarisme (Icaria Editorial), which will be presented, amid disappointment, after Easter.
The suffering of the homeless, those who have it the worst in this country, has quietly ended up in the trash because, as has been demonstrated once again, politics is primarily interested in itself. The interest of the parties always prevails over the needs of the country. When, now, on the street, parliamentarians see a man piling up cardboard like a mattress, will they dare to look at him? They could have created the conditions to make it possible for the problem of those without shelter to be treated from the roots. But a mixture of laziness, apathy, routine and tactics has prevented it. Aren’t you ashamed? No, I know not.
Politics has been the main problem in our collective life for many years. A problem that the media – let’s face it – have contributed to exasperate, along with social networks, the greatest instrument of polarization. That the toxicity of politics is a general disease of the West cannot console us, but it tells us that, beyond the typical “Spain hurts me” that has been in force among us since the generation of Unamuno and Maragall, there are causes common to all Western societies that explain the degradation of democracies. The exasperation of individualism is the first cause.
A simple look at our streets shows us a society that ignores the common good: graffiti that destroys facades and trains, apathy and dirt around garbage containers, the behavior of the majority of dog owners, cans, plastics, papers and debris that degrade forests. Politicians, often so criticized, are nothing more than our mirror. We are very similar: they also do their own thing. As Baudelaire would say, politicians are as hypocritical as you, reader; And like me.