The candidacy of España Vaciada in the province of Palencia obtained 378 votes last Sunday (0.39% of the provincial census). They were the most rickety results of one of the most obvious and least commented failures of these elections. They came to see themselves with their own parliamentary group and deciding governments, and they have ended up as non-parliamentarians. I won’t be the one to make firewood from a tree that didn’t even grow. I just wonder: where were those voters? Because Vox – which has been trying to take advantage of the anger of the field since the first hunt they organized – did not leave.
The answer came on Monday, when Grand Prize it became the strongest opening of the year on television. The contestant version of the popular festivities monopolized the success that was denied to the provincial platforms of Soria, Teruel, Zamora and others. In a way, this means a return to the original order of things in Spain.
In recent years the way of looking at the countryside had changed, reversing an inertia of centuries. There has been an intense political debate, but also in the university, in the world of thought, in literature, in art and even in the cinema (remember Alcarrassuro o the beasts). Rural imaginaries and the importance of exoduses have been meditated on and many clichés about black Spain or redneck jokes have been outdated. A lot of progress had been made in understanding all that reality that was beyond the M-50 and that for many were only landscapes framed through the window of the Ave. And all, for what? So that Villarriba and Villabajo compete again at the rhythm of a brass band. It remains for Fernando Esteso to return to sing At Ramona’s and we will all be in the place from which it cost us so much to leave.
