Goodbye, Andrew

The choice of words is important, as is the non-choice. With levels of language, orality, false rhetoric, imposture, care, swear words, barbarisms, slang, we build a way of understanding the world. On the trip to Sicily that we took with readers of ARA and Il Viagetto, a Sicilian woman explained to us that she and her daughter understood each other with a language of signs and facial expressions that, on the other hand, her son, who lived in England, did not understand. The gesture of cutting the throat, furrowing the brows and bringing the fingers together – “Like a magnolia”, as Víctor Català would say – touching the heart, touching the nose... We imitate the everyday way of speaking of mothers, grandmothers, and politicians.

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has responded to a journalist's question about the luxurious penthouse that the regional government bought her and that “could not be used as an office”. She said: "It is for sale; chao, pescao". We are talking about taxpayers' money. The idiom is not appropriate. “Chao pescao”? Perhaps it is very cheli to use the expression at other times, but in this case it is of superlative infantilism. You bought a luxury penthouse, honey! And when you saw that people, who are not entirely stupid, did not take it well, you backed down and put it up for sale. There is no need to talk now about whether the profits will go to pay for residences for Madrilenian elderly or cement pajamas for the immigrantor running through Ceuta. Governments should not carry out renovations on luxury penthouses that are bought as one buys a car. “Chao pescao” is an expression that weakens her profoundly. And you, readers, will tell me that the “Me gusta la fruta” was already of appalling bad taste. It was. The difference is that then it was on the rise and now it is on the decline. On the decline, “chao, pescao” condemns her precisely to that.