Music of choice to go with the article: Ball Of Confusion
It’s August and the summer is dragging on. Will there be a job left to return to, people wonder. Will there be a house, a life, a country left? The papers see no hope, nor do the news tickers on the 24/7 screen. It’s nothing but the stocks going down and long term interests going up until they suck up what little our governments have left to spend on us and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse some democratically chosen person appears on TV saying horrifyingly stupid things like taking people’s future away makes them eager to spill their money - the televised words only causing interests to go higher up - while you already know some unknown, definitely not democratically chosen entity will soon demand further cuts. What happened to good old freaking out over some cucumbers for August news?
Meanwhile it’s entertainment for everyone. Village festivals are thriving like never before, with this year’s added hit of coincidently having contracted el Ratón, the mad killer bull that earlier this month gave a German visitor a televised and highly straightforward death beating - three swift blows and the bugger was done for - endlessly repeated for growing cult status. Always the Germans, one might say, prone to accidents they would never have at home, but there is indeed a strong international contribution to the festive mood. Spain apparently has turned the place to have some good, cheap fun and now that San Fermin type bull runs have become common ground for husbands and fathers from all over the globe, the early adaptors must have gone for the more savage Mediterranean varieties - though these do not necessarily end in the ritual culling bulls receive in the cultural heritage heartland, the animals making far too much money for their breeders. But when has money been an issue in Madrid?
The San Fermin light approach has also infected the sacred murdering practices, by the way. Lots of style, but where’s the substance? a newspaper critic complained. With a docile bull giving the torero an easy fight and making the innocent public believe the freely given ear was deservedly won, it all smells too much of flamenco and so little of arte. Submission is a never ending struggle and should be so for the greater glory of the oppressor. What would be the use of bullying Catalunya if the Catalans didn’t resist with such praiseworthy fervour?
The pre-London street fights in Lloret de Mar as well had a considerably European accent to it, as certainly has the recurring fashion to jump into the swimming pool from one’s bedroom window, even or perhaps especially if the pool is way too small for adventurism. I’m not following the numbers closely, but I have a feeling there are more drunk Italians involved then when it was still mostly a British affair. Where does such behaviour come from? Someone jumps from the first floor and then somebody gives the second a try and so on until a guy who jumped from the fourth smashes his head on the pool rim and people think, wow, you can die from this - and a trend was born. That’s how the scheme goes, likely, but what happened before? How pissed and pissed-off were these kids when they started moving into unknown territory? I mean, jumping from the first, that’s a San Fermin, every ordinary fool can make it, but when they’re getting el Ratón style it all becomes a whole different story. Were they that desperate or simply bored? Or were they high and flying? There’s always a certain Russian flair to the idea of dying for the heck of it, I like to think.
Swimming unexpectedly has joined the ranks of dangerous hobbies this year. In the easily approachable and family friendly beach we are frequenting these weeks at least three swimmers have managed to drown in just a handful of days. And they were adult men, most likely. My dear friend Wik Nij Diep went too far out when he took a sunrise swim in front of Hospital del Mar in Barcelona. He’d been mumbling and thinking, as was his habit, and when a cold current woke him up he needed all his strength to make it back, crying tears of relieve when he reached the shore. Some people are going even further, it seems, or maybe they run into an untimely stroke - just adding to the weird deaths list while so many are wondering what they will be returning to in September. It’s that kind of summer.
Amidst the hardcore partying there was the public feasting of self-confessed innocence, a limitless display of exceptionality and otherness in the very heart of the cultural heritage (the inherited culture). Up to one million lost souls, gladly exposing their willingness to outsmart more carefree living neighbours, showed up at the lounge cult show of the great divider himself, the bishop of Rome. Paid for by the wage workers’ taxes, carefully selected beautiful young devotees from all over the world were flown in to show their love and admiration for the squeaky bird in the long white dress, seated under I must admit a quite beautiful yellow tree of which only after deep searching some pictures could be found on google imágenes. There was chanting and laughter and people eager to help each other with things they didn’t really need - quite the jamboree.
The vast majority of the visitors were Spanish, of course. The no job no house no children generation – all those things a careful catholic is supposed to find come his way – were enjoying a free lunch and perhaps hoping for salvation where it wouldn’t hurt. Then suddenly an ominous picture filled the family TV screen. Our dreaded future cabinet’s president with the painted smirk came practising his long awaited imminent status with a kiss on the Holy Spirit’s Glove and then some book to put away in the holy library. It all looked pretty scary from the sofa. Is this how it soon will be? Are hypocrisy and disdain to rule again in the beaten lands of Wider Castile? A showcase of revisionist repression many European governments would love to copy? I came here six years ago and so far have only experienced ZP and his bright bunch of well-dressed female collaborators who lightened up the easy years and then wandered off into growing misery when the money game became too dirty for them. The happy days are over soon. The people want Pepe. Or so the message sounds which the media keep repeating until we really do desire what we’d better be without - or are at least convinced our neighbours might, which in a televised democracy counts up to more or less the same.
Well, that’s what I think, but how can I be so sure? All I am counting is days. Waiting, that’s what we’re doing. Waiting for the world as we knew it to return, waiting for salvation. We’re waiting for a world wide Arab spring or 15 M, we’re waiting for the other to act. Anybody want to die for the good cause?
With love,
The Subterranean Traveller
