The logic of news imminences functions like a strobe light (that device that generates intermittent light, causing very curious optical illusions): what today occupies all the headlines may disappear tomorrow without anything really having changed. The Gaza conflict displaced that of Ukraine, the escalation with Iran repositioned the devastation of Gaza, a health crisis as striking and cinematic as that of hantavirus is irremediably covering up the Ormuz mess. Etcetera. The mechanism is not accidental. It responds to a media ecology based on competition for attention, a finite resource that is distributed according to criteria of emotional impact and novelty. Also of narrative saturation. When a topic stops generating surprise or no longer offers any immediate and appetizing dramatic twist, like that of the viral ship, it falls into the background even if its objective gravity is equal to or greater than others. A girl bites a dog and contracts rabies, but the next day Larry, the popular cat of Downing Street, scratches the leader of the British opposition and the case of the biting and rabid girl is forgotten all of a sudden. These are examples of insubstantial but well-seasoned events.This volatility creates an intermittent reality, where facts do not disappear from the world but from the narrative. Ukraine continues to be a conflict that totally conditions international relations, but its media presence fluctuates according to the irruption of other (supposed) emergencies. Gaza continues to suffer a horrible humanitarian crisis, but the coverage is diluted when another geopolitical focus erupts with more force. And so it goes. Public perception is therefore built on a regime of discontinuity, where importance does not depend so much on the magnitude of the event, but on its ability to impose itself in the incessant cycle of novelties through a non-logic of an emotional or even aesthetic character.The phenomenon is not new. During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis completely overshadowed the Algerian War, even though the conflict accumulated hundreds of thousands of deaths. The 1994 Rwandan genocide (relative to the total population, one of the worst in history) was invisibilized because it coincided with the toughest moments of the Balkan War, a war closer and easier to codify culturally and emotionally. The 2010 Haiti earthquake disappeared from the headlines in a few weeks, replaced by the eruption of the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which affected European flights and, therefore, generated a more direct sense of urgency. Even 9/11 swiftly displaced the coverage of the 2001 Argentine crisis, which until then occupied a central space on the international agenda. It stopped being talked about, period. Since it did not fit the official apocalyptic narrative, not a single syllable was said about the behavior of world stock markets, which reacted with indifference to Bin Laden's attacks.

On April 29, 1935, a group of brave riders began pedaling through the center of Madrid, leaving from Atocha station. They were participants in the first edition of the Vuelta a España, a competition that this year celebrates its 80th edition in 90 years, as it was not always possible to take place. That first edition featured 50 cyclists who faced a 10-stage route of more than 250 km each. When the Vuelta returned to Madrid on May 15, only 29 cyclists arrived. The rest had folded, exhausted by a tough route on dirt roads, with slopes that broke their legs and caused damage to their iron bicycles. The winner was Belgian Gustaaf Deloor, who beat Catalan Mariano Cañardo, second in the general classification. Marianu He suffered a lot, as he quickly lost teammates and suffered falls.

In recent days, we've witnessed something that seemed like a sociological experiment. How would society react if, suddenly, what theoretically generated understandable concern—the irregularities and cases of corruption attributed to people linked to the PSOE—were replaced almost the same day by other, symmetrical issues—the irregularities and cases of corruption attributed to people linked to the PP? In a matter of hours, many citizens went from being very attentive to certain personal and partisan events to contemplating others that, in some way, cast doubt on the former (or vice versa). Certain improvised statements, later transformed into exercises in overinterpretation of reality by slicing them into pieces in talk shows, intersected with others that, conveniently reheated on social media, have now become part of the small local history of frivolity. Thank goodness these things never last more than twenty or thirty hours after the initial outbreak... All of this also has a global dimension. If Donald Trump were to announce today that he intends to get a divorce—this is the first example that comes to mind—it would generate a fleeting scrutiny on the subject, relegating the ignominious rubble of Gaza to the background. Let it be clear that I'm not referring to major natural disasters or other events that would justify a sudden change of subject, but to something inconsequential from a collective perspective.

As sensitive as we are to the misinformation caused by fake news, we are at the same time extremely tolerant of the systematic publication of white lies intended to make us agree with the political agenda of those who fabricated them and the media outlet where they are published. I think of all these studies, investigations, interviews, and reports used to create a biased representation of reality to make it more complacent and less conflictive, or to make it more threatening and provoke a more forceful response in favor of how we would like it to be.