The clandestine word

A party beyond the hours allowed by anticovid restrictions in a Madrid venue, in October 2020 Luis De Vega / EPS

Madrid was a party — and surely it still is.

It appears in the English and German newspapers, Italian philosophers comment on it, impatient French come looking for it: Madrid is a clandestine party.

The word party and the word clandestine seemed distant: the pandemic has brought them together without social distance.

Every weekend a hundred clandestine parties are discovered in Madrid;

by clandestine, many more are not discovered.

There are words that are unexpectedly turned around and, as we give it, we are laughed at: who could imagine that the underground would be a party, that the word clandestine would be applied to the sizzling of wealthy boys?

The Academy defines clandestine as "secret, concealed, especially done or said secretly out of fear of the law or to avoid it."

The clandestine is a situation where certain activities cannot be done, they are outside the law.

That is why the underground used to be the undesirable option, fraught with dangers, for those madmen who wanted to change a political order considered unjust or free themselves from an invader.

It created weird lives: torrents of simulation where nothing was what it seemed — so that everything became different.

(I have the general rules of the law: I belonged to a political group that once, when I was 17 years old, “went underground.” So I went, let's say, clandestine: I had to use false names, make up stories to justify why I was where I was, always looking over my shoulder and, I confess, I enjoyed that little pleasure of knowing that nobody knew. Everything was hidden, stealthy; everything could be mortal. Now the strange thing is this secrecy of conservation and stridency.)

Because now the idea of ​​clandestinity has fallen on the side of those who do not want anything to change but that everything remains the same.

Some who have a very temporary disagreement with the law and power: who do not agree with their way of taking care of us and seek their own form of carelessness.

Some who do not want to stop doing what they always did — have fun — and when they are forbidden to do so, they find an even more fun option: the clandestine party, that lame oxymoron.

In the rare phrase "clandestine party", what is more decisive: whether it is a party or is it clandestine?

How do you compare that routine of going out to have a couple of drinks or a couple of pills and wiggling around for a while and taking someone to a dirty orchard, with the excitement of finding out where it will be - feeling connected - looking for a way to enter —Feel a part—, do something forbidden —feel a transgressor—, dance in danger —feel brave—, think for a moment about all those idiots who stay at home —feel different — think for two of those rulers And those parents and all those old people who don't understand — feel better —?

So, I think, the question answers itself.

And it is a party because it can be deadly, although not necessarily for those present but for their parents, their grandparents: they are those things that are done at that age when one still believes that death is a game - of chance.

And then, of course, show it.

Clandestinity is fine for a while, but the Romans, who knew a lot about social networks, made it clear:

, to be is to be perceived.

Now we would say to be

, because Latin evolves.

Here, partygoers follow the old rules: underground used to be done to produce highly visible effects.

Only generally those effects had to be empathetic;

in this case it gets complicated.

What clandestine partygoers do when they fall into their social networks is expose their practices to the gaze of all those who do not know if they detest or despise them or envy them or what.

But while we decide, we condemn them with that comfort that comes from knowing where the good is.

It's cheap, easy, and it's also a form of party: public, virtuously public, a pain in the neck.