The traditional photograph of the candidates for La Vanguardia turns forty years old. Xavier Cervera has decided to celebrate them in the Besòs Fluvial Park, at the viewpoint overlooking the mouth of the river. It is a well-known and spectacular landscape, which frames the three chimneys of the old Sant Adrià thermal power plant, a good part of the coastline, many promises of a decontaminated and urban future and a horizon preceded by the languid agony of the Besòs.
At ten in the morning, the sun shines on the water and allows visitors – cyclists, runners, dog walkers and some absent-minded homeless people – to admire phenomena such as the appearance of flying fish that, according to one of the organizers of the assembly , “they are the size of a chicken.” It’s as if they wanted to join the photographic ritual. The landscape includes a categorically blue sky with trails of distant planes, palm trees on the verge of dehydration and a sign that defines the area as “Fishing Refuge.”
Like all the signs in the surrounding area – and in the rest of the city –, this one has also been conveniently vandalized with the classic oligophrenic, indigenous graffiti and completed with abstruse stickers, such as one that says “OTORCSESCROTO 25 h.” that I prefer not to investigate.
There is an exceptional and newsworthy circumstance: one of the candidates will not attend. Carles Puigdemont, leader of Junts, has declined the invitation and his party also did not want to send any substitute. It is an absence with a political message that, depending on the result, can be interpreted in one way or another. Order of succession: Alejandro Fernández (PP), Pere Aragonès (ERC), Ignacio Garriga (Vox), Salvador Illa (PSC), Carlos Carrizosa (Cs), Jéssica Albiach (Comuns Sumar) and Laia Estrada (CUP).
First impressions: Fernández sports a cruise captain’s tan, Aragonès, somewhat shrunken, opts for the tie and, perhaps to imitate him, Illa also puts it on to compete in the presidential halo. Carrizosa repeats the same model of summer jacket and vintage t-shirt that defines the, presumably, farewell tour of a decadent group. Albiach dresses as if she were going to an independent music festival and Laia Estrada arrives late because she, unlike her colleagues, has come by train and by taxi from the station.
More vaguely spontaneous impressions: Illa is the only candidate who approaches the four police forces guarding the area to greet them. Candidate entourages are a form of random human grouping that is difficult to interpret. Members of security participate, communication experts carrying cell phones, a family member who takes advantage of the sunny Saturday to accompany his relative, and the typical organic sycophants manufactured by the party leadership.
Thanks to the foresight of Isabel Garcia Pagan, we protect ourselves from the sun (we are in the middle of a geomagnetic storm) with a thin layer of cream. The smell of cream offsets the perfume of the area, which is not exactly lavender air freshener. But from the Forum of Cultures and the wastewater treatment plant we learned that, imitating those who have to live with the endearing aroma of slurry, the secret lies in pretending that you do not realize how stinky it is. It is also a political attitude: understanding that a degree of consensual sacrifice helps to better digest reality, especially during the electoral period.
La Vanguardia has exposed some of the covers from these forty years. It is an ideal resource so that, while waiting, candidates can overcome the discomfort of not knowing what to say to each other. “I don’t recognize this one,” says Illa, pointing to Teresa Sandoval, that fleeting candidate from the fleeting CDS. “She is very cool!” Aragonès exclaims with the rhetorical enthusiasm of a member of the jury of the Eufòria program.
Xavier Cervera places the candidates on a platform framed by the semi-wild magnificence of the landscape. Forward. On the right. On the left. A little further apart. So. Between disciplined and resigned, the candidates respond until the photographer explains the reason for this scenery: the confluence of fresh water and salt water. The candidates do not seem to be enthused by the Zen lyricism of the explanation and when Cervera suggests that they not be so static, that they bring dynamism to the scene and incorporate some gesture of enthusiasm (“Imagine that it is tomorrow night and that you have won the elections “, he tells them), Fernández, this candidate who has more sympathies among those who do not plan to vote for him than among those who do, rebels saying: “If we start with creativity, we already know how things end.”
Creativity, in fact, evolves: the candidates grab a glass of water (homage to a hypothetical Water Pact) and then walk towards the camera with a very photogenic determination, which some malevolent film buff (probably abstentionist) could relate to the posters of the movies Wild Bunch or Reservoir Dogs. Regarding demonstrations of enthusiasm, timid signs of victory and a thumbs up. The session ends. The candidates say goodbye with a cordiality that contrasts with the bad temper and irritation that they have had to express in interviews, rallies and on social networks. On the way to the car, perhaps they will have read a homemade poetic-claiming message, painted on the asphalt, which could compete with the electoral slogans: “The two of us holding hands will be able to overcome the bad.”
