Some time ago a writer told me in the middle of a party a phrase that I will never forget: “The Transition was made by legs“He was referring to the fact that if in the most tense hours of the democratic reconstruction of Spain, which are two, there had not been euphoric substances in between, the foundations of harmony would never have been laid. Four of the seven fathers of the Constitution were less than 40 years old when they retired to the Parador de Gredos and I imagined them becoming slices on a walnut table as they discussed the chapter on the Crown. Legsin case you haven’t heard, it’s slang for cocaine (slices it’s for the stripes), a substance that has been much more important for the private part of Spanish public life than anyone is willing to admit. I don’t believe in the slightest that during the tablecloth pact the diners snuck into the bathroom: that requires a certain willingness to lose control for a while and those politicians took matters of state as seriously as their egos. But I liked the idea. The years of the high constitutional period were also those of industrial reconversion: much less elegant drugs devastated generations of young people who took refuge in that god. He was in it prime time The FAD campaigns warn of the thin line (wink) that separates fun from addiction, but also Lola Flores who defends that “everything can be done methodically”. Someone told me this week that in a very central neighborhood of Madrid (I avoid the name to avoid the stigma) you can once again see cheap drugs being consumed on doorsteps and leaving you without teeth. That horrible vision is taking over neighbors who have always been very left and very right. It’s one thing that the rich have never stopped getting off their asses, it’s another that the poor still do it.
Rich drug, poor drug
