Often, to understand the present it is essential to know the past in order to avoid repeating mistakes. Although sometimes there is a temptation to stumble over the same rock, to see if we are capable of overcoming the rock this time. But the usual thing is that we do the same damage, or even greater damage because time does not pass in vain.
These days I was reading volume III of the Complete Works of the journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales, which deals with the period of the Second Republic, where he reveals the distrust that secessionist Catalanism aroused not only among the Catalan right, but also in the Spanish left. . Chaves tells a fable that he suggests was told to him by a politician from the Lliga about what was happening in Catalonia, which could be equally valid today.
Two villagers are on their way and one is carrying a cow by the halter. In a pond they find a toad, which causes a gesture of disgust in the cow's farmer. The other, to contradict his compadre, affirms that the toad is an animal like any other. “Would you be able to eat a toad?” argues the one with the cow. “I would eat it if there was a need,” he replies. They argue and in the end they bet: “I'll give you the cow if you can eat the toad.” Driven by greed, with his eyes closed and fighting back nausea, he grabs the bug and begins to swallow it. The other, terrified at the possibility of being left without a cow, proposes: “Will you give me the cow back if I am able to swallow half of the toad you have left?” The toad-eater accepts the proposal because the disgust he feels overcomes him and he hands her the piece that he has not yet devoured, which his compadre puts in her mouth without opening her eyes. Afterwards, they continue on their way silently and after a while they stop, while, staring at each other, they wonder, stupefied: “And why did we eat the toad?”
The fable repeats itself: the Spanish left is willing to eat the toad of amnesty although it finds it indigestible and the independence movement is about to swallow the other piece of the buffoon, which means giving up on leaving the Constitution. Both, by the way, without any desire. And this is good? Maybe yes, but surely not for the toad.
