We like to be talked about outside, even if it’s good. That they speak from afar, even if it is good, is like a notarial deed that we exist. We watch the broadcast of the cycling race on TV when it passes through the town, instead of going out to watch it through the window, because the gaze of the other, the television, is the statute of existence of our town, the certification that we are not Brigadoon – the imaginary valley of the Metro musical of the same name – and that we are in this world. And if those who talk about us are fans and customers, so much the better.
An article from The Telegraph has therefore been trending in Spain this weekend. The text, in a somewhat frivolous way – with the contest of a single witness and a regurgitation of data already known and published both here and in the United Kingdom – accused Spain of playing with the health of the British to continue prescribing Nolotil ( more common trade name for the pain reliever metamizole), a drug whose side effects appear to be rare or very rare (rare or very rare) in British and Nordic patients, an impression that still requires further scientific study that they ratify it, but that the Association of Those Affected by Medicines has taken it to denounce the Spanish public health system before the courts.
In the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and some other countries, these rare or very rare effects must not be so rare that they have led to the drug being banned. In the absence of more scientific certainty about whether metamizole really is a health risk for Anglo-Saxons, the web has been filled with jokes, mostly humorous, about how often British springbreakers jump from Spanish coastal balconies trying to hit the pool and the different health risk posed by Nolotil intake compared to base jumping in flip flops.
If it is proven that there is this genetic predisposition of hooligans to develop agranulocytosis as an adverse effect of the painkiller, the matter is serious, but for the networks there is no such category of matters.
Aside from the most elementary tribal instincts, there is another explanation for the mockery, however good, with which we villagers tend to address any vicissitudes that embarrass our visitors, and we do this even with those from the inner market, the from the neighboring province. Instead of loving tourists because they are exactly us at another time of the year – as Jorge Dioni López explains well in The discomfort of the cities (Arpa Editores) – and criticizing tourism, which is a model of exploitation predator of the territory and of people, we do the opposite: defend the predation and vilify those who enjoy, like any of us, a few days of celebration thanks to labor rights and the low cost. It happens to all of us, I love this profession and not so much its officiants. Maybe we are rare or very rare. Even if it’s good.
