Next Station…

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here’s my version, then theirs.

I had always
imagined that we had done something terribly wrong, something so unpardonable
that we were now suffering the consequences of this unnamed act. Something must
have happened that I was unaware of. The good people of Extremadura must have committed
some sort of heinous act, something so vile that we were being punished for our
impertinence. Something so terrible that neither of the main political parties
could remedy at the national level, even though their respective parties had enjoyed years of absolute majorities. After all, how else could it be explained? Here
I was standing in Madrid at five thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday, after a
long and exhausting training session, and there was no public transport home
available. As my colleagues from Palma de Mallorca got ready to take the return portion of the flight that had
taken that very morning and while others got ready to board AVEs for the costas,
here I was contemplating another night in a hotel. I say anthoer after having been forced to stay
in one the night before because it was simply impossible to get to Madrid for the
9:30 session. As I searched for a way home it came to me. The
complete negligence of decades of elected officials couldn’t be the reason for us having the inglorious
distinction of being the only community without a single kilometer of
electrified rail. The vicious circle of reduced services thus reducing
passengers couldn’t be blamed on our officials who once-upon-a-pre-crisis time dreamt of airports with
connections to London and Berlin. It had to be someone else’s fault and there
the answer was on my mobile phone…the French! As they did during the War of
Independence, the French were once again meddling in the affairs of
Extremadura, making it so that only way to get home was by using their invention,
BlaBlacar. An hour later I found myself in a shared car with three other people
who had been in the same predicament. They had also been attending training
sessions in Madrid and had no other way home. It’s people like this that
politicians often say we need more of in the region, ambitious, industrious folk training to better themselves to help
better our region. The least they can do is provide them with a lift home.