Chinese drop, definition: It involved immobilizing a prisoner lying face up so that a drop of cold water fell on his forehead every five seconds. The real torture for the victim was the madness that would have been caused by not being able to sleep, due to the continuous interruption of the drops, nor by being able to drink that water when thirst attacked, which would have caused her death from cardiac arrest a few days later.
Well, there is another, more contemporary form of torture: according to Barlovento Comunicación —with Kantar data—, the daily television viewing time in Spain per viewer in 2024 was 301 minutes, just over five hours. What has not been quantified is the number of cardiac arrest deaths resulting from its contemplation. Of course, if home conversations between children, parents, and/or grandparents are preferred, it is not even clear whether teenagers’ silences except with their friends, marital arguments, or grandparents’ endless battles are more deadly than the news.
But since it seems that we have to die of something anyway, it is preferable to watch fiction series rather than listen to the subtle analyzes of current political events that those champions of rhetoric such as Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Cuca Gamarra or Miguel Tellado usually do. Dying, yes, but not of boredom or overwhelmed by the constant insults of these good stylists whose desire to reach Moncloa seems to have clouded their brains for some time.
The problem, or one of them, is whether to choose a noteworthy Polish series like Heweliusz (on Netflix) because in that case boredom is excluded but not the dramatic intensity in contemplating the sinking of the Heweliusz ferry in the early hours of January 14, 1993 in the Baltic: 55 deaths in the greatest maritime tragedy in the history of Poland and a subsequent and regrettable trial in which the main objective of the excellent magistrates was none other than to save the shipowner and his proven greed by deciding to send the ship on its usual voyage despite not being adequately conditioned for this purpose.
A justice at the service of the powerful, an attitude that no longer surprises anyone in these times which, fortunately, are no longer silent as the judges of the Supreme Court verified last Monday.
