Wish You Weren’t Here
Spain is heading into a snap election, and judging by the country’s right and far right, you might think the place was somewhere between economic ruin and civilizational collapse.
There is one awkward problem: reality. Spain is currently the fastest-growing major advanced economy, while employment has been hitting record highs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t serious problems, housing above all (like everywhere else it seems), but it makes the increasingly apocalyptic talk of sacrifice, national ruin and even the need to “refound” Spain sound faintly delirious.
My latest Camino a Ítaca column for HOY is about the strange discrepancy between the Spain outside my front door and the dystopian version being sold to voters as the election campaign gets nastier. The travel writer in me is confused.
And about a slightly more troubling possibility: perhaps all that talk of pain and sacrifice isn’t a description of what has happened.
Perhaps it’s a promise.
Read “Ojalá no estuvieras aquí” in HOY
Wish You Weren’t Here
Troy Nahumko
Have you ever read a travel article that fired your imagination, carried you halfway around the world and then, on arrival, discovered that virtually nothing described in it actually existed?
As a travel writer, I confess we occasionally help this along. Faced with a destination of limited charms, one searches heroically for something to gush about, while overlooking non-existent public transport or the national enthusiasm for spitting on pavements.
Still, I’ve rarely encountered a discrepancy quite as dramatic as the one between Spain and…Spain.
The first is the country I encounter when I walk out my front door. The second is the dystopian hellscape described daily by politicians and commentators somewhere to the right of Pinochet and Kissinger.
I keep looking for it.
Around the Plaza Italia, my extremely normal neighborhood, there is disappointingly little evidence of civilizational collapse. The immigrant invasion seems particularly badly organized. I occasionally see a couple of darker-skinned men repairing a roof so that the winter rain doesn’t drip into someone’s grandmother’s soup. Others with different accents, suspiciously, can be found serving cañas and gin and tonics to españoles de bien.
The square itself is generally full of people eating, drinking, laughing and committing other acts incompatible with national ruin.
Nor can I locate the ideological police. People denounce the government quite freely, often several decibels above the volume advisable in an actual dictatorship. Occasionally somebody begins broadcasting racist or misogynist cuñadismos and the people at the next table move their chairs. This is not, as far as I can tell, because the regime has deprived him of his freedom to be crude and brutish. They simply don’t want to sit next to something so fetid.
Even the economy refuses to cooperate. The IMF has just raised Spain’s expected growth this year to 2.5%, making it the fastest-growing major advanced economy. The IMF, you will remember, is that notorious Bolshevik cell whose meetings presumably begin with La Internacional before everyone nationalizes a bank.
None of which means everything is wonderful. Housing is a mess. Unemployment remains too high. Public services need more investment. Wages, rents and the cost of living do not magically disappear inside a GDP statistic. There is plenty to fix.
But travelling backwards seems an eccentric way of getting anywhere better.
Perhaps, though, I’ve misunderstood the campaign rhetoric.
Perhaps all this talk of sacrifice, suffering and difficult decisions isn’t a description of Spain at all. Perhaps it’s advance notice.
Us plebs have enjoyed our little holiday: minimum-wage increases, pensions, employment, public services. Eventually the grown-ups must return and explain that prosperity has become unaffordable. Sacrifices will have to be made.
Not, naturally, by the españoles de bien with SICAVs, several flats and a tax adviser who knows Luxembourg unusually well. Someone else will have to do the sacrificing.
Or perhaps this is simply how economic sadomasochists flirt. All this talk of pain and necessary suffering may be little spicy notes slipped beneath the electorate’s door.
You have been very naughty. Vote for me and I’ll show you what austerity really means.
Which is perfectly fine between consenting adults.
My only concern is that nobody has told the rest of us the safe word.
