More pallets, less Guardiolas

The other day in a village a man fell. He was picking the hen on the upper floor of the farm. Poof! All-you-can-eat broken ribs. A lifetime of working, a lifetime of loving the land… And he fell to the ground at the end of his life. He is old now and no one is coming after him. There is pain… His broken ribs are our pain. A world, some people, are leaving. Without saying goodbye. Playing the last game on a mandatory horizontal bed playing field.

These games of reality are not wanted. There are people who only want to see Guardiola leaving Manchester in 3HD Dolby Surround. Before Barça, or tomorrow from Puerto Hurraco Football Club. They want idealism and they don't want realism. Guardiola will save us all. Guardiola, Gaudí, Rodoreda, Jaume I… They want to be them. There is only one Guardiola. He cannot be cloned. But they want to be him and for him to be the solution to all their problems. And especially those of the country. Amen.

There are Guardiola sects. Churches, religions, dogmas of faith... Multitudinous prayers shouting hoarsely: “If Guardiola were in charge everything would be fine. Catalonia would be independent. Catalonia would have reached Mercury and we would tie selenites with sausages”. They want Guardiola to be a synecdoche for the country. The part explains the whole. But a leg cannot explain the whole body. Sesame Street. Red, green. Outside, inside. Guardiola is outside, but of course, we have the Guardiolas inside. 24-hour junkies who pretend to be who they are not, never will be, and, above all, will never do. They think they can go to a shop and ask: “Give me two hundred grams of Guardiola”. And then they will sit slumped on the sofa believing that the placebo drug will transform reality 360 degrees. Guardiola by spoonfuls from an ice cream bowl. They inhale that this will make them excellent players, coaches, fathers, people… But it will inflate their bellies and dry out their shells. There is no transfusion, neither of blood, nor neuronal. Scientifically proven.

Reality can only be transformed from radical proximity. Without roots, there are no fruits. Guardiola knows this, but the Guardioles do not want to know it. The country is played out on the field of reality. The country must be a 'is' every minute, not a 'should be' before or after the match. The country is not a League final, Champions League, or an occasional, unique, unrepeatable Copa d’Anís. The final is every day. Catalonia cannot permanently be a hypothesis: it must be a fact. There are too many synthetic amateurs, PVC fans, dreamers and dream-of-anything-inedible, utopian slot-machine players, triumphalist gamblers, tragicomic weekenders or three-day-break enthusiasts, fakers, simulators, impostors… There are too many non-footballers who claim to be footballers. Theorists who disguise themselves in expensive, immaculate jerseys, soaked in cologne, shouting that it is sweat from professional turf. Real players are missing: peasant builders, plumbers, aerial installers, contortionists, funambulists… That is why idealism kills Catalonia and makes it lose. A vault cannot stand without columns. The country is supported by those who fall from the top floor of the farm, stirring chicken feed. And so many people who seem not to exist despite existing. Despite playing the most difficult game every day: the game of life. We have the best team: real people, and we choose ideal people. This way, one can never win. Without feet and heart touching the (the) ground.