In addition to the terrible heat we've had, the concern this summer has been Ceuta. The flood of immigrants entering the city has been playing out on all European screens, and it has surely favored the victory of Alternative for Germany this Sunday.In Spain, the colonial issue has been added. As if it were a series, I have been following in the news the careless and strange management, the patriotic demonstrations, the political reactions, and the chaos. Being Catalan, the Spanish “territorial integrity” does not worry me at all, so I have been able to follow the subject with curiosity, that is to say, with the degree of indifference necessary to understand. The conclusion I have drawn is that, geostrategically, Spain matters as little in the decisions of the great powers as Catalan autonomy matters in the decisions of the State. This is how I explain the bewildered inaction of the government, and I watch the politicking and conspiracy theories like a puppet show.This spectacle, however, occupies the news and ends up removing from the front pages the attention towards the Ceuta camp, which, in the best of cases, will become chronic. Making something chronic until it is normalized is the way to hide problems. And the problem must be hidden because in this case, whether we like it or not, the rawness of misery no longer arouses curiosity, but moral interest. Seeing the raw reality knocking at our door highlights the political instrumentalization of both those on the right and those on the left. Now it is no longer so simple to look away by talking about "papers for all" or "forced repatriation," and the problem that one did not want to see overflows and makes an impression.
Before the summer, at a dinner with friends, the discussion arose as to whether, being able to know, it was better or not for the doctor to tell you how much life you had left. The question was: should the doctor tell the patient what time they have left, or is it better to delegate it to the family? That the doctor has to decide who to tell is unfair to them, but it must be part of their job, so based on responsibility and therefore so necessary. With immigration, as with education or the Catalan language, we will pay the price for not having taken responsibility for it, in other words, for not having thought about it, due to concealment and business. I wonder if a democracy without thought can be considered a democracy. Perhaps what comes now, then, will only be the acceleration of a process of decades that at this point can only surprise the few privileged people who have managed to hide the problems even from themselves.
