The chaos in Catalonia is unprecedented because it's currently colossal, but it was foreseeable long ago: we've been living with the commuter rail chaos for many years, directly or indirectly, and its users have been undervalued for many years, going viral despite themselves. That's why political rhetoric is so damaging. Because reality too often reveals priorities and interests. Despite the incessant rain and snow, everything eventually comes to light. The trains aren't running, but all these people who lose hours and patience on each journey, if they even manage to travel at all, are a large part of those who keep the country running every day. And the country is tired, angry, and disappointed. Because Catalonia, many days after a tragic accident, is, as they say, a house of cards. A place that hangs and unhangs, as we used to say at home. Say what you will.
If things aren't taken care of, they break down. In an era where things are thrown away instead of repaired, infrastructure is part of this disastrous dynamic. We recycle beyond our means, yet we continue to overproduce. We live surrounded by excess. The anxiety to accumulate and compete has relegated the care of what is essential for life to the bottom of the list. If the infrastructure that should make the country function isn't maintained, it collapses. There's no need to wait for the rains. It's already broken. Because there are other toys we like more, and to which we've dedicated more attention and much larger budgets. Our taxes, of course. Because we want trains that go faster while the ones we need to get us places stop running. The point is to always be in a hurry. Before one project is finished, another one is already being opened. We don't breathe. We want to expand an airport when we already have an excess of people coming and going and an excess of pollution from all that coming and going; We want to eat fish, but we're strangling the few fishermen who are left; we want to eat fruit, vegetables, and meat, but we're drowning the peasantry in bureaucracy and letting generational diversity fade away, leaving fields barren or burned. And, on top of that, what can be learned from the past is relegated to a dead end, and the prevailing nostalgia is one of hatred and confrontation. "Can mea y resbala" (literally, "I pee and slip") falls short. It's frightening.
As human beings, in many circumstances of our lives we wait to reach a breaking point before we start taking action. But governments can't afford to do that. Resignations don't solve the problem because what they've resigned from is solving it. As Roberto Espínola told itAs a member of the College of Geologists of Catalonia stated in this newspaper, "zero risk doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean the necessary efforts and investments shouldn't be made to minimize this risk." And that's what we're complaining about. They waited until we reached an unsustainable limit, this shameful and decadent chaos. And once it arrived, they served up all the carrion on a platter to the vultures, who circle the area rubbing their hands together.
The Sicilian town of Niscemi, in the south of the island, has suffered a glide of earth caused by intense rains, and one of its neighborhoods has been left hanging over the abyss. This is not a metaphor. The images literally show how the earth has fallen away, leaving a gash that seems like a portrait of the world today. Solid ground has disappeared. We can find less and less to hold on to in a world that is falling apart.
Where should we hold on to avoid falling?
