It is convenient to fear what you want, because destiny is capable of playing very bad tricks.
The most desired summer ends, the one that seemed destined to open a parenthesis of normal happiness after months of unknown anguish. It has been a hot summer, even suffocating, but in the thermometers its normality has ended. We still know very little about covid-19, but at least we know that it is not seasonal, that the heat does not kill it. I have spent two months in the province of Cádiz, in a town where there have hardly been any infections. As I write these lines, I know that none have occurred in weeks, and yet the summer blues of the virus have also come this far.
Some afternoons I walk along a huge beach where I hardly pass anyone, because you cannot walk along the seashore without a mask and the punishment of the covered face dissuades even the most fanatical of the walk. I dont complain. I know nothing. I suppose it has to be that way, but many afternoons I stay home so I don't feel sorry for myself. And I would love to go out to dinner, to have drinks there, just like before, but some restaurants have not reopened, others never have free tables due to capacity problems, and my smoking friends resist, and I understand them, why go out dinner is not about eating. To feed ourselves, we all have a refrigerator at home, and again that is the key word, home. I don't go to the beach and I don't go out to dinner either. Now that nobody imposes it on us, we stay at home, today in yours, tomorrow in mine, the day after in this or that one. We confine ourselves to be able to laugh, to enjoy drinks under the night sky, to do in summer something similar to what we had always understood to be alive. I dont complain. I know nothing. I abide by the rules, but I stay home and no longer wonder about the hospitality crisis, about the jobs in the hotels and the beach bars. Sadness is a matter of life and death, an enemy that must be fought with all available weapons.
It is convenient to fear what is desired, even when it does not depend on our will. Juan Carlos de Borbón has left Spain without pain or glory. Without settling his accounts with the Treasury, without trying to justify himself to his former subjects, without showing the least respect for his own figure, elevated to the category of living legend after four decades of reverential worship of his personality. He has left, following a deeply rooted family custom, and has chosen an absolute monarchy as his destination, one of the very few that remain on the planet. It would seem like a declaration of intent if it weren't for the fact that no one here wants him anymore. The juancarlistas have disappeared from the face of the earth at a speed greater than that developed by the coronavirus to turn our lives upside down. After having badly identified his person with the Crown, with democracy, with freedoms and even against the dictator who educated him and prepared him as his successor, now his idol is nothing more than meme meat. That also seems sad to me.
I think of my old and admired Republicans, the best generation of men and women this country has ever produced. I think of their ambition, their emotion, the joy with which they fired a king in 1931 and the proud sadness with which they declared themselves defeated, but never defeated, when they lost everything, except faith, eight years later. I think of those who left and those who stayed, those who fought outside and those who fought inside, who never tired of wishing for what never came. Although they are no longer with us, I think they would have deserved another outcome for what remains their own story. A sober ending, even slightly epic, instead of this vaudeville of money counting machines, fake princesses inflated with botox, safaris with corpses, and so many episodes of self-shame, of others' shame.
I have borrowed the title of this article from a book by Luis Cernuda, an essential poet, an even more essential Spaniard. I also think about him, and I wonder what he would feel right now, when once again, and I quote him again, stupidity succeeds crime