Bill

Look, it's Carnival again this weekend! There will be parades and costume contests, and loud music. We've already got the stage ready at the end of the main avenue in Platja d'Aro for the parade, and lights in the streets, and they've put up some rather sinister giant Carnival masks on the roundabouts!

Accidents? Why? Because groups of foreign cyclists pass by and I think: maybe they are not cyclists, but a plague of wild boars that have come down from Ardenya and are circulating in an orderly fashion through the streets, disguised with helmets and coloured jerseys. Or that police officer at the school gate, could he really be a paedophile? Is that woman's wig real or fake?

Look at that other one, dressed as Donald Trump! Wait a minute, he takes off his mask, and who's underneath? Joe Biden? But it can't be, an American president here, uncovered. It must be another mask! And this troupe choreographing the Nazi salute? What bad taste, what terror! What a disaster for a culture! But they are anti-fascists in disguise, anti-populists and experts in giving complicated solutions to simple problems! And that fool with an electric saw? Is it a real saw or is it made of plastic? In any case, what a bad example! What is he supposed to represent? He's in a troupe called the Great Concern for the Catalan Language. Look how they laugh and dance, all wearing berets! Oh no, they're not berets, they're tongues! And that one in the middle, isn't that Rufián? No, it's a costume!

This weekend they will have the parade. There will be floats full of lights that will parade slowly, with loudspeakers, occupying the streets, with coordinated dances and throwing confetti at us; there will be the Fake News troupe, so cheerful, with colorful costumes, jumping and shaking their asses! They will surely win some prize! I can't help it, I have a thing for political floats, like this trailer with a big "We will do it again", a very funny troupe full of people with fake beards and dressed in red sequins and a white cross on their backs - the Swiss flag? What is it like? - and that tractor that pulls a solid gold Dialogue Table, or this other one with a Singular Financing written with flashing bulbs that dazzle, or the Question of Confidence, or that other trailer with a cardboard reproduction of the buildings of the Generalitat and the Parliament...

What a baroque festival, the Catalan Carnival! What a popular and participatory celebration! I like it so much that, under the guise of this very article, I solemnly request that it be declared a national day once and for all.