In situations as tense as we live in Spanish politics, the moments when intelligent and bright characters like Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who left us early, are missed the most; or Miquel Roca Junyent, who fortunately is still available for reason and “seny” in Barcelona, although the nationalists do not take him into account; even Joan Manuel Serrat, who retired when we needed him the most.
I remembered Rubalcaba last week when we held on the “scourge of fires” in Culleredo (Coruña), analyzing with unusual vigor the causes of the proliferation of forest disasters that devastated Spain and the world last summer. We listened to experts and testimonies, but our minds were split between the fires analyzed there and the unsettling fire burning intensely in Cortes, where we “looked into the abyss” for several hours, according to a senior Government Presidency official.
When asked what a chemistry professor was doing in politics, Rubalcaba told us on the recording of the documentary “40 Years of Democracy” (Canal Historia and TVE): “From the speaker’s lectern, I saw the room as the table period of the elements; noble gases, and also rare earths; moderate, tame. “The metals, which is mine, a group of ductile, occasionally brilliant people. And then there were the people who didn’t get along; and the hyperactive lawmakers. Chemistry works like life.”
After Rubalcaba’s ingenious comparison of the semicircle as a periodic table, what we experience in Spain and the world makes us see Parliament as a tableau. theater of devastating fires in increasingly tense days. Fortunately, Spain is not Peru; Your parliament has not been raided by angry right-wingers like the Capitol. But forty years ago, there was a coup d’etat with guard Tejero’s pistol in hand. Now, with that unfortunate attack that only fuels the threatening fire, risky comparisons abound.
“You have to distinguish between fire, arson and emergency,” Professor Juan Picos told the Next Education Forum. All right, we’re dealing with a serious fire in the room, bordering on emergency.
“The fire that started in May in Siberia is still continuing,” warned Mayte Zaitegui-Pérez from the European Climate Foundation. The fire in the Spanish Congress was even longer, because at the head of the legislature, Vox began describing the Government of Pedro Sánchez as “illegitimate” and Pablo Casado’s PP joined the chorus.
“Rural depopulation is the biggest problem of wildfires because abandonment means carelessness in prevention,” said Valentín Gonzalez Formoso, president of A Coruña State Council. In parallel, general disinformation, the product of information manipulation, leads to neglect of the democratic formation of interested but helpless citizens who attend the meetings.We live in these times when the legislative and judicial powers come face to face.
“There were always fires, but before in Galicia the houses were not burning like they are now,” warned firefighter Peter Brea. “We sent a troop to defend a town this summer, and the fire came before us.” This same acceleration in parliamentary fire now threatens coexistence and the 78 Constitution, which political extremism has questioned. Do not let democracy burn in the hands of extreme arsonists!