The evangelical stories of Holy Week can be interpreted apart from their religious reading. They can be read, for example, in a political key. Indeed, some of the episodes of the Passion help to understand the volatile relationships between mass, ideology and power.
The first and most well-known of the Easter political messages reminds us of the cruel fragility of leadership. Jesus enters Jerusalem to celebrate Easter amid applause and gestures of affection from a crowd that hails him. “Hosanna!” they say to him. In other words: “Help us, save us!” It is still curious that 2,000 years later, in modern democracies, the masses still defeat their leaders with updated synonyms of the very ancient word hosanna. When we claim that there is a lack of charismatic leaders, we are calling for these kinds of exceptional characters. A savior leader. The glorification of Yolanda DÃaz follows this pattern.
The masses expect a leader who will miraculously solve society’s problems; and that it does so at no cost to the population. But the problems of a country are tremendously complex and ramified. Often, the most a ruler can do is mitigate or contain the greater evil. However, the leader and the masses have accepted this pact: “Give me your votes and I will transform reality”. But the reality is very harsh. relentless Sooner or later, the impotence of the leader will become apparent. And then, oceanic, disappointment will arrive. When the expectations were higher, the disappointment is more bitter. Applause turns into whistles. Love becomes hate. The liturgy of Holy Week links, with a few days of difference, the applause of the Hosanna with the cries of the mass in the face of the doubts of the governor Pontius Pilate: “Crucify him!”.
The comparisons are odious and we have already said that we are doing a strictly political reading of the evangelical accounts of these days. Speaking of the mood changes of the mass, it is inevitable to evoke the sparkling leadership of Laura Borrà s. A few months ago, she was idolized by the most fervently pro-independence crowd; now only his relatives accompany him. She goes down very alone on the rocks of a harsh prison sentence (I say harsh because it has been proven that, even though the regulations were flouted, she didn’t pocket a single euro). Those who lit it are now hiding.
In another Gospel scene, Peter hears the cock crowing and realizes that he has already denied being part of Jesus’ group three times. Exactly one year ago, something similar, but much more cynical, happened with the leader of the PP, Pablo Casado. From one day to the next, all his fellow directors, starting with the spokeswoman Cuca Gamarra, stepped aside. “We are with you!”, they told him when the internal hostilities began. A couple of days later, they not only hid like Peter; rather they betrayed him as Judas did, who betrayed his friend with a kiss. The enemy does not always come from outside. The cruelest is at home.
