Perhaps I am wrong, but this is what I think and this is what I have written to a friend: “After what happened in Barbate and given its precarious repercussion on Spanish society, I fear that we are not just facing a manifestation of the evident weakness that suffers our State, but in the face of evident proof of the insensitivity and atony of the nation. Let's say it clearly: we are facing the beginning of a crisis, perhaps serious, for the Spanish nation. I have been thinking for years that Spain, the first nation state to be formed, runs the risk of being the first to dissolve. I know it seems impossible, but I sense that it is not. There is no nation if there is no solidarity; there is no solidarity if there is no community; There is no community if there is no sense of belonging; There is no sense of belonging if there is no affectio societatis, and there is no affectio societatis if there is no shared interest. Sorry for this vent, but every day I have fewer friends to have it with.”
What happened in Barbate on the 9th was the immolation of two civil guards, murdered in the act of duty while carrying out orders, in unacceptable conditions of staff and resources when compared to those of their murderers. It was a public sacrifice filmed, while they were mocked and insulted by citizens whose cowardice and moral turpitude did not deprive them of their status as compatriots.
Therefore, when the entire society legally organized in the form of a State, that is, the institutions, the people who are in charge of it and the common citizens allow such nonsense to happen without a strong unanimous reaction, that society is seriously ill. , and it is his illness that is spread to the State.
The problem is not, therefore, the institutions and laws; The problem is the people who, out of interest, calculation or carelessness, go exclusively about their own business and don't give a damn about what happens to others, whether they are servants of the State or simple citizens. And we cannot justify ourselves by attributing responsibilities only to politicians, journalists, so-called intellectuals and their auxiliary troops.
Twenty years ago I wrote that, in The Iliad, the narration of the funeral honors given to two warriors fallen in combat is of special importance: Patroclus and Hector. Thus, when Priam learned of Hector's death, he asked Achilles to hand over the body of his son, and he agreed, moved by the old king's pain; and then, “for nine days they carried abundant firewood, and when for the tenth time Eros, who brings light to mortals, aimed, they took out, with their eyes filled with tears, the corpse of the bold Hector, they placed it on top of the pyre and set it on fire.”
But, many centuries later and at the other end of the Mediterranean, although within the scope of the same culture, when a Yak 42 plane fell in Turkey and 75 Spanish soldiers died, Spain consented, almost mute, to the burial of several dozen of its children who They died serving her, without having taken care to diligently identify their remains. So she then ended up saying, poor Spain, it no longer even manages to bury its dead with decorum!
Today, everything is different, but everything is the same. Life goes on as if nothing had happened: the dead are in the way. Not all media outlets, with obvious calculation, have given the Barbate event the significance it has; Not all politicians, not even those with the highest government responsibilities, have paid due attention to it, and there has also been no shortage of institutions that have explicitly refused to grant the fallen civil guards the recognition they deserve. They were just some civil guards, who – observata lege plene – were faithful to the extreme. But the example of his dedication remains for whoever wants to see it. Those soldiers who fell in Turkey and these civil guards murdered in Barbate, essentially equal, have offered their lives in an act of service to the society that had entrusted them with their care, although a part of it does not consider them “theirs.”
