Pedro Sampol, essential

The furious current events shouldn't make us forget too quickly. In some cases, they should never make us forget. Last Sunday, a mass farewell in the cemetery of his native Montuïri served as recognition of the admirable political and social career of Pere Sampol, who died on Friday at the age of 73. Sampol had been one of the key figures in the political life of Mallorca and the Balearic Islands over the past few decades, and in particular an essential figure of left-wing Mallorcanism (or left-wing nationalism in Mallorca, although I've never personally liked to talk about nationalism, as if the nationalism we suffer daily weren't Spanish). In any case, he was one of the most prominent defenders these Islands have ever seen of very specific and defined ideals: defense of the Catalan language and culture, defense of the environment and the territory, and the fight against social inequalities. From these foundations, Pedro Sampol was able to build a solid, coherent, and inclusive progressive discourse, firmly grounded in a deep understanding of Mallorcan social reality and open-minded toward the world.

A speech and also a practice. Sampol was the vice president of the first Progress Pact that governed the Balearic Islands, chaired by the socialist Francesc Antich, another figure who also passed away. a few months agoA brilliant orator, Sampol was the first senator in Madrid for the PSM, the Socialist Party of Mallorca, the party he founded along with other key figures in Mallorca's recent history, such as Damià Pons and Mateu Morro. He was a leader in government, management, and social transformation from the streets and institutions. Pedestrian: if Mallorca of the last forty or fifty years isn't what we would like, without the PSM it would have been considerably worse.

As a result of all this, Sampol is one of the great names in the recent political history of the Catalan Countries. That's why it's sad that, at the time of his death, many in Catalonia don't know who he was, or know him only from that meme.APM? in which Sampol exclaimed, irritated, "This is a chore!": The meme was certainly funny, but its underlying theme was the fight against the systemic corruption of a PP that is always easily out of control. It is, height, that we have so much knowledge of the charlatans who fill spaces in the media and on social media with empty speeches, yet we have so little, or nothing, about our reality and about those who work to change and improve it.