We like to be talked about outside, even if it's good. Being talked about from afar, even if it is good, is like a notarial certificate that we exist. We watch the broadcast of the bicycle race on TV when it passes through the town, instead of going out to the window to see it, because the gaze of the other, the television, is the statute of existence of our town, the certification that we are not Brigadoon – the imaginary valley of the Metro musical of the same name – and that we are in this world. And if those who talk about us are foreigners and clients, so much the better.
An article from The Telegraph has therefore been a trend in Spain this weekend. The text, in a somewhat frivolous way – with the help of a single testimony and a rehash of data already known and published both here and in the United Kingdom – accused Spain of playing with the health of the British by continuing to prescribe Nolotil ( most common trade name for the analgesic metamizole), a medicine whose rare or very rare side effects appear to be much less so (rare or very rare) in British and Nordic patients, an impression that still requires further scientific studies to confirm it, but which The Association of People Affected by Drugs has led her to denounce the Spanish public health system before the courts.
In the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and some other countries, these rare or very rare effects must not be so rare because they have led to the drug being banned. In the absence of greater scientific certainty about whether metamizole is really a risk to the health of Anglo-Saxons, the networks have been filled with jokes, most of them humorous about the frequency with which British springbreakers jump from balconies. Spanish coasters trying to get it right in the pool and the different health risks that ingesting Nolotil poses compared to base jumping in flip flops.
If it is proven that there is a genetic predisposition of hooligans to develop agranulocytosis as an adverse effect of painkillers, things are serious, but for the networks there is no such category of issues. Aside from the most basic tribal instincts, there is another explanation for the gloating, even if it is good, with which we locals usually address any vicissitudes that bother our visitors, and we do it even with those from the internal market, those from the neighboring province. . Instead of loving tourists because they are exactly us at another time of the year – as Jorge Dioni López explains in The Unrest of Cities (Arpa Editores) – and criticizing tourism, which is a model of predatory exploitation of the territory and of people, we do the opposite: defend predation and vilify those who enjoy, like any of us, a few days off thanks to labor rights and low cost. It happens to all of us, I love this job and not so much its officiants. Maybe we are strange or very strange. Even if it's good.
