“If I can’t lie”. Rita repeats again and again, to every journalist who approaches her, that she is there “for justice”. “Allà” is the garden of the church of the Divine Pastor in Motril, ground zero of the family, sports and political melodrama of the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, inside which his mother fasts , Ángeles Béjar, to restore his son’s reputation. Rita insists: Jehovah’s Witnesses “we are committed to justice”. He accompanies Mariángeles Montes in his mid-afternoon microphone sessions on television. Everyone pays attention to them because Montes is the woman of the day: she facilitated Cope’s WhatsApp conversations with the penitent mother. “No, I’m not alone, I’m with my sister-in-law, who came in with me and I can’t be alone because I can get dizzy. (…) When they say mass they will take me out of here so that no one knows where I am. (…) Come on, kisses. We’ll see each other, God willing.”
In front of the chapel, in the unrepentant and sticky hour of the table, there is not a soul who does not have a microphone, recorder, camera or headphones. Motril yawns with the blinds down, just like the southern half of the country from June to September after lunch, waiting for the sun – and on this tropical coast, also the humidity – to give the humans a break. Rita has become an artistic partner with Mariángeles and repeats to everyone that they – both, she emphasizes – are Jehovah’s witnesses, not so her good friend Ángeles Béjar, who, they explain, will be praying inside the Catholic temple for the good name of his son
With just under 60,000 inhabitants – and these last days of August, probably three times more floating population -, Motril is the second city in the province of Granada. It occupies the eastern end of the majestic and fertile estuary of the Guadalfeo river, guarded to the west by the formidable pinnacle of Salobreña Castle, the Andalusian Mont Saint-Michel. Rubiales’ father, Luis Manuel, was mayor here for the PSOE between 1995 and 2003, so it is surprising how little interest the neighbors have in the drama experienced by an illustrious family. There is a long tradition of leftists in the city, indicated by the milestone of the first democratic mayorship, of Enrique Cobo, a member of the Labor Party of Spain, a communist formation that defined itself as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist. That’s how we were in 1979.
In the quiet square of Dr. Jaime García Royo, located in front of the church of the Divina Pastora and next to a dilapidated headquarters of the CNT, there are barely half a dozen curious children who entertain themselves with a ball, fed up with how uncool it is to finally have CNN’s Portuguese delegation camped right there in front of their noses. If on Monday barely two dozen relatives and friends approached to express support for the suffering mother, on Tuesday the payroll seriously decreased. Apart from relatives and Jehovah’s witnesses, the hunger strike only seems to be of interest to the journalistic profession, which always lives in August on the lookout. But there are no echoes of The Great Carnival, Billy Wilder’s masterpiece about the sensationalism of event journalism before a man trapped underground. This hunger strike is not the scene of the agonizing rescue of the child from the Rincón de la Victoria well, but rather a press call by the Rubiales family that no one seems to be excited about, but which the press has had the courtesy to attend . Some put on a dawn watch in case the prodigal son shows up to his mother’s rescue and others just wish he’d call her to tell her to quit, which the self-harming twist didn’t work this time. The battle of empathy was lost in a testosterone surge.
Because there is, in the face of this strange sentimental derivative of the reputational crisis of the Spanish Football Federation, which seems more than Berlangian written for that Albacete that José Luis Cuerda dreamed of in Amanece que no es poco, a patent apathy of the sovereign people. And this perhaps also provides a reading of how times change, despite the appearance that there are reserves of biodiversity, like football, impenetrable to mutations. Perhaps if Rubiales had rectified and apologized believably on the first night, this southern and Catholic country would have opted for forgiveness, apart from legal and disciplinary considerations. We are a demanding society but generous with repentance. However, the challenging harangue before the Extraordinary Assembly of the Federation, which could be said to be inspired by that of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (as cleverly imagined by the actor Víctor Clavijo with a memorable dubbing on the social network formerly known as Twitter), seems to have scared off the “pulling the veil” lawyers.
At the eight o’clock mass, a handful of parishioners arrive, but there is no news of adhesions to the cause, apart from that of the witnesses. Just as the gaucho who invented Jorge Luis Borges died at the hands of his “so that a scene repeats itself”, the death of Julius César, they are unaware that they exist today for having played a beautiful memento for Chus Lampreave, the long-tongued gatekeeper of What have I done to deserve this? -a very appropriate title- he said, to justify his constant indiscretions with the neighbors: “If he asks me, I have to explain everything with all the yous and uts. I would like to lie, but that’s the bad thing about witnesses, that we can’t. If not, I would already be here.” And so Cope got an exclusive yesterday.
