Basilio, the campaign adviser who stars in David Trueba's latest novel, works with the conviction that voters are like children who lack imagination and that the only future they are capable of imagining is identical to the past. Basilio's mission is to help his candidate to connect with the voters and one of her first contributions is to instruct her that the electorate is not capable of attending to complex messages or simple messages, it is only capable of conceiving what they have already experienced. “Imagine that you close your eyes and dad comes to hold your little hand again, like when you were a child about to cross the street. This is what they want to feel,” he tells her.
In my opinion, one of Alcarràs's achievements is the familiarity that viewers feel when Carla Simón presents us in great detail the “life before”. A life that for some is current, but for many others we have only lived when we were little or through our grandparents or parents: the coexistence of different generations of the same family, the special relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, the happiness of playing in freedom and outdoors with siblings, cousins, parents and uncles… We are hypnotized by the masterful reunion that Simón offers us with that happy childhood, whether real or imagined.
I wonder if it is true that we only know how to imagine things from the past and if this implies that we are incapable of thinking of a different future. Perhaps this would explain why, when we feel that things are going badly for us, reactionary ideas and counter speeches triumph. The guardians of the essences. Is it because of the difficulty we have in thinking about what we should do so that our life (individual and collective) is different, without being like before? Because it is easier for us to look at what we are losing than what we could build together?
There are those who maintain that in order to make a good analysis of our society it is important to have known different cultures. Get away from concepts whose validity we take for granted. Opening your mind is a great antidote to nostalgia. Those who have this ability to imagine new scenarios are the ones who pull the strings of the world. It is what makes the difference between being nostalgic or visionary.
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