Catalonia is experiencing strange days that are dragging on longer than expected, if such a thing as strange days even has a time limit. It feels like we're living in a disaster movie, with everything unfolding in a chain reaction, like those lives that can't seem to get back on their feet. All we needed was the wind. It arrived with a warning, though, complete with an alarm, and when you hear it in the street amidst all the other alarms, it feels like a contemporary concert. It's come to assert itself amidst so much inclement weather, as if we'd been missing it. The wind, a bothersome phenomenon when it's just a breeze. The wind, which brings no answers and bursts forth with the force of someone who has no arguments. This aggressive wind, like an authoritarian leader around the world. The wind, which doesn't love trees. The noise of the wind, which keeps us awake and seeps into our brains as if a ghost wanted to speak to us. No, not that wind now. We're all too tired. But we're pinning our hopes for calm on the anticyclone that's about to arrive, they say, and that will bring a weather respite. Because you can't please everyone, and too much rain is usually harmful. They say there will be days of sunshine in a row. Perhaps we should also set an alarm to help us get all the vitamin D we're lacking. Although it's also on sunny days that everything is laid bare and the disaster becomes clearer. Just in case someone is unaware that Catalonia has been paralyzed for years and that the wind is the last thing to enter through the door. This is what happens when you leave it open. They already told us that it's wise to be careful with the draftsIn any case, you don't need to be particularly esoteric to see that everything is a sign, not very subtly, warning us that we're at the limit of too many things and that it's time to start moving in the right direction. With the wind, we must wait for it to stop, but many other situations are within human control and can be resolved.
The education sector, which should be one of the pillars of our society and shouldn't replace the educational work of parents, has had enough, and has gone on strike and taken to the streets. At the worst possible time, some have said. I don't know what they're complaining about, others have said. As if there were a better or worse time to protest and as if they didn't have plenty of reasons. In the end, nobody will want to be a teacher. Or worse, only the bad ones will remain. The farmers also went out to protest last week. Understandable. They're not drowning in the rain. They're drowning in bureaucracy. A bureaucracy that is undermining everyone's desire to do anything. There are more and more of them, and it's getting more and more complicated. Right now, the best-functioning trains are toy trains, and tractors, if the Catalan agricultural sector continues to be treated this way, will soon be nothing more than museum pieces. And the wind is blowing hard.
A The Secret of the Old ForestDino Buzzati wrote a beautiful piece about the need to connect with nature, and how nature has different voices that make it feel much closer and more fascinating. One of its protagonists is the wind, Matteo, who has lost the strength he once possessed. "He was imprisoned for twenty years, I've heard. You don't go unpunished if you spend so much time locked up..." says a cabin that has withstood the wind's onslaught. May we not have to pay for all that time spent paralyzed, like Matteo. We still have the strength to reverse a situation that doesn't come or go with the wind. And let's talk to nature, or we'll end up foolish.
