We are all Ana Vázquez

Let me start the story at the end, which is where great stories begin. Later, if you have the patience, readers, we will go to the flash-back. It so happens that at the Congress of Deputies, three restrooms and a dining room had to be sealed off “after someone emptied a spray with a toxic substance in them”. Three floors of the building were evacuated, including the kitchen area. Cooks, waitresses, and a member of the Mauritanian delegation, who happened to be passing by, were intoxicated and had to receive medical assistance.

Just a while before, Deputy Ana Vázquez, from the PP, following Gabriel Rufián's aesthetic, wanted to show her colleagues in the chamber a pepper spray canister. With the little jar, she intended to denounce the suffering of the women and girls of Ceuta, who carry sprays of this type –she said– to protect themselves.

To be able to show such a little jar, we have to imagine that a community manager had the idea and sent someone to buy the gadget at The Spy Shop or in Andorra. The fact is that the President of the Congress, Francina Armengol, called our heroine to order. She told her that what she was showing was a weapon and that, therefore, she had to leave the premises. Ana was indignant, just as Uma Thurman would have been indignant if her katana had been snatched from her, because she argued that the jar was empty. And she walked down the carpeted stairs of the Congress (she was wearing comfortable sneakers, which contrasted with the white jacket that many PP deputies wear) making all sorts of histrionics.

If Saint Thecla, who is the patron saint we have chosen among all of us who write, is dutiful, things must have gone like this. Ana, before the heroic speech, went to empty the jar wherever she could think of: the restroom. She threw it away, closed the door, and left there in a hurry, thinking that the others, those who came later, especially those from the Mauritanian delegation, would just have to manage to go pee in the men's restroom. Let this deputy know that she has everything paid for. I adore her.