He was sitting at a conference by Arcadi Oliveres, a well-known activist for peace and social justice who left us in April 2021, and he cracked a knowing smile when he flirted with the oxymoron game, a classic of his speeches. This columnist’s favorites were those that denounced the language of war, such as “friendly fire” or “military intelligence”, phrases of opposite meaning adopted by the general public without the slightest resistance. Returning to the wisdom of Oliveres is pertinent now that, in our politics, fruitful in elevating hilarious characters with more discursive audacity than intellectual baggage, nonsense is connected.
Inconsistencies that flourish in Valencia, where the election of Carlos Mazón’s replacement is conditioned by a renewed political alliance between PP and Vox which aims to fight the European Green Deal. As if that damned dana, which caused 231 victims just a year ago, was an isolated meteorological “explosion” – to use the expression of former councilor Salomé Pradas in the moments of maximum tension of the tragedy -, with no connection to the climate emergency. The leaders of the Valencian Generalitat and their allies intend to carry forward the reconstruction by rowing in the opposite direction to the solution of the problem: the documented fragility of the Mediterranean coast is not addressed and greater opposition to the European roadmap for the ecological transition is prescribed. Until the next tragedy.
It is frightening to perceive how the responses to great collective challenges are articulated starting from political inconsistency or citizens’ frustration. In Catalonia, the far right has not influenced governments or influenced speeches. But the demographic boom of forces like Aliança Catalana, added to the consolidation of Vox – the former with penetration into medium-sized cities and a more rural territory and the latter, with greater impact on the coast and in metropolitan environments – is changing behaviour. In Junts, the legitimate desire to serve the voters frustrated by the inability to digest the results of the processes and the country’s changing demographics have led to an agenda that prioritizes debates on multiple recidivism, jobs and immigration, with a vocabulary designed to combat ultra positions. The swerve has its dangers, because the track record of conservatives imitating the priorities of the far right is not synonymous with a good harvest. Meanwhile, Sílvia Orriols is finalizing the opening of its headquarters in Barcelona and hopes to emerge stronger from the polls being prepared by the end of the year.
We note in distant politics, never as agitated as American politics, how lies and a lack of empathy are rooted in public life, without penalizing it as happened before. An erosion of the moral need that we perceive even in the closest reality when the truth becomes ancillary and malevolent approaches are normalized, such as that of immigration “overflow”. Remember that Plataforma motto for Catalunya? “First of all, those from home“From peripheral radicalism to political centrality, what a journey. The result is that we tolerate leaders who are content with the guilt of others and we watch in amazement as the pyromaniac forces reinvigorate themselves. Oliveres’ common sense would have already given us another oxymoron: “President Mazón” or “Orriols Solution”.
