Tourism phobia? To the expats? To immigrants? There are polite and respectful tourists (you do your own sightseeing, right?), expats with a desire to integrate (surely they have a relative living abroad) and immigrants without whom we wouldn't leave (who cares for dependent relatives?). Fear and/or phobia abroad, in general, is a dead end. It harbors hatred of difference. Structural problems—housing, insecurity, poverty, strain on social services, etc.—are one thing, and people are quite another. If instead of looking at collectives, we focus on specific individuals—neighbors, friends, coworkers, shopkeepers, acquaintances, or those we greet—our perception becomes humanized. The other person becomes a familiar face.
The phobia and fear of Muslims, Spaniards, Catalans, soccer fans, gays, posh progressives, French people, mushroom pickers, urbanites, truck drivers... I don't know! They're dangerous escape valves. Without taxonomies, we can't collectively count ourselves, but by reducing society to labels, we do ourselves a disservice. If we look into each other's eyes, if we talk to each other, things change radically. The key to tolerance lies in close contact without prejudice. It's also in close contact that the problems of coexistence lie, of course.
Without shying away from the palpable difficulties, the point is to keep our feet on the ground with a minimum of empathy and humility, with a desire to understand, putting ourselves in the other person's shoes. Listening before judging and blaming our woes on anonymous beings who, as you can see, are suspiciously similar to us, driven by the same desires: earning a living, having friends and family, trying to grasp a shred of happiness.
What the politicians of the new populist right are doing, with Trump as their spearhead, and Milei, Ayuso, Abascal, Orriols, and so on as hard-working apprentices, is exactly the opposite: pointing out groups, preaching distrust—the American president has said this openly—and, badly, setting fire to coexistence. They want us to be emotionally fanatic on their side or frightened on the other side. They want us to react from the gut. In the fight, they are unbeatable. In simplification, insults, and lies, they always win.
They take a problem—and we certainly have many, and very real ones—and exaggerate and distort it with sensational skill. Often, they return it like a boomerang towards the victims or those who denounce it. NGOs are now causing poverty, the UN is to blame for wars, Zelensky shouldn't have provoked Putin, empowered women are feminazis, immigrants are getting rich at our expense, defenders of democratic institutions want to destroy freedom, Catalan is endangering survival.
Change your mind? Accept a different truth? Stick to the facts and figures? Seek out different points of view? Doubt? Compare? Think for yourself? Educate yourself thoroughly? Many are afraid. And lazy. Sometimes, too, ashamed. They choose not to complicate their lives. No change: you cling to a supposedly immutable consistency and are restless. The current is too strong to go against. The refuge is simple: I'm already having trouble talking about bondholders. woke ("They go with the lily in their hand"), of politicians ("Of everyone!"), of intellectuals ("They, ray, come and pontificate without rolling up their sleeves"), of tourists ("I try to travel less, he he"), of immigrants ("Of the illegals, eh?"), of Muslims (eh?)), of Muslims likes on social media.
Until not long ago, reasoning and changing one's mind was considered wise. Remember? Today, according to the sorcerer's apprentices of ultra-anti-politics, it's a thing of the weak, the faint-hearted, and the traitors. They harass us with shouts because we don't move from the closed circle of their simplistic and incontestable truths: foreigners out! Period. They're rapidly inuring us to toxic and unprecedented barbarities. This unbridled extremism is truly frightening. Very frightening.
