As Vázquez Montalbán often reminded us, the attitude of suspicion towards power is fundamental and, often, everything that appears to be is. For example, it had been days since we had seen a maneuver as sweeping as the Spain-Germany statement on the official status of Catalan in Europe, which comes just as Junts says it wants to break with the PSOE. By the way, it's a statement saying they're going to talk. What have you been doing up until now?
But let's not lose the thread. This country has been forged in militant skepticism. The 40 years of Franco's dictatorship were a great school for learning to read between the lines and understand everything from the first reading, often by the simple process of understanding the opposite of what the propaganda said. At home, they would ask: "What did the radio say?" The response was brilliant: "It says we'll be so good."
And yet, spending your life suspecting everything and everyone is hard, it's very tiring. In fact, it's not life at all, because you'll explain to me where the fun is in living without hope or trust. But this is how we're living, and the result is fatal. We've doomed anyone who moves, even before they move.
Being skeptical doesn't make you wiser, nor does being sensitive make you more sensitive, nor does jumping to conclusions make you think faster, nor does inventing alternative theories make you smarter.
We lack the pause to think before speaking, to listen before interrupting, and to read before offering an opinion, to appreciate the gratuitous beauty of so many things that work before throwing our hats in the fire, to laugh alone or with others, with a sense of humor, before grasping life as a drama. Social media has ended up molding the angry, disbelieving man. Deep down, isolated in his misfortune.
