The Achilles heel of the left is elitism, one of the reasons why it is losing votes around the world and the main reason why the return of Donald Trump to the White House is a serious possibility. I mean the influence of the radicals, the heirs of Marx. Rigorously cerebral, the comrades inhabit ivory towers, far from what occupies the minds of the popular classes they claim to represent.
Thinking too much makes you see problems where there are none, or give them an importance that the bulk of the population does not share. I think of the disproportionate noise of the woke movement and its obsessions with racial or gender identity. I think of Yolanda Díaz, the vice-president of the Spanish Government, and the own goal that was scored this week.
Just when the tenuous coalition he represents is facing the most difficulties, it occurs to Díaz to declare that it is necessary to "rationalize" dinner times in Spain, that it is "crazy" that there are restaurants open at one in the morning and that there is such a difference between the nocturnal customs of Spain and the rest of Europe.
Well, those who know her tell me that Díaz is a very intelligent woman. I don't doubt it. But like many intelligent people, he seems to lack the most valuable quality in politics: sanity. In other words, it betrays a problem of deafness when it comes to connecting with normal people beyond the closed world of believers who share their dogmas. In short, he doesn't know where he is.
Not long ago a veteran Spanish diplomat told me what I immediately understood as a great truth: “For the Spanish the most important thing in life – more even than sex – is going out to eat with family or friends” . This is what the Spanish interpret not only as a sign of identity, but as the very meaning of life. This is what decided me to come and live in Spain, my mother's land, and leave Britain, my father's, forever.
Here we understand better than anyone else, or better at least than in the Protestant nations of the north, that life is short and must be enjoyed. That you work to live and not the other way around. There is no other philosophy so right. The awareness we have of our ineluctable mortality does not corrode us, it infuses us with energy to have a good time, day and night. This is acting rationally, Mrs. Díaz, not what you propose from your Marxian myopia. And his political myopia too. What a gift he has given to the right, my God! And with what fruition his nemesis, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has received him!
La Pasionaria del Partit Popular, president of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, enjoyed the most in her response to Díaz on Twitter/X. " Spain has the best night life in the world, with streets full of life and freedom... They want us puritans, materialists, socialists, without soul, without light and without restaurants because they are hungry. Bored and at home".
I would never vote for Ayuso. I live in Catalonia and I do not want to suffer again the harm that, due to stupidity or cynicism, his party caused us the last time it was in power. But I agree with her about the nightlife and the new left puritans. She knows well enough that eating and drinking when we feel like it is what we do in these latitudes, it is what distinguishes us from the rest of Europe, including Italy. And not with a sense of inferiority or with the feeling of being rare, as Vice President Díaz seems to believe, but with pride.
And more so in Madrid than in the more "puritan" (or "more European", as some would like to believe) Barcelona, but even more so in the south, where the founding Spanish idea that you have to live for two days spreads, like nowhere else in the world that I know, in the scoundrel. Seeing the squares of Andalusia full of children playing in the late hours of the night will cause horror in some, especially if they come from northern Europe; to me it causes me the joyful confirmation that I have succeeded in living in Spain.
I will never forget a story that my sister, who is from Madrid, told me. I was on holiday in Cadiz a few years ago. One night, a typical night, she and her husband went out to dinner with their three daughters, aged between four and nine. Another couple accompanied them with a couple of children of the same age. At one o'clock they left the restaurant and went to where their cars were parked. On the way they came across a bouncy castle. A lady sitting on a chair was selling tickets next to a sign that said: "Half an hour: five euros".
The five children begged their parents to let them jump up. The grown-ups weren't too enthusiastic about the idea, but my sister came up with what she thought was the solution. He proposed to pay three euros for 15 minutes per child. The lady didn't see it. "Read the sign!" he said. "But ma'am...", answered my sister. Nothing. The creatures squealed, cried, begged their parents to relent. The other adults joined the debate. It was already half past two in the morning, but the guardian of the castle did not give up. Argument ensued until the lady finally exploded.
From the depths of his Andalusian soul, the soul of Spain in its best version; possessed of the absolute conviction that the pleasures of life should be enjoyed whenever the opportunity appears; giving voice to his indignation, his fury, his incomprehension at the inability of those outsiders to understand that life must be lived now, no matter the time or the cost, he exclaimed: "Pero, ¡por God! What a shame I had!"
There you have it, Mrs. Diaz. Is this. And because you don't understand it and Isabel Ayuso does, she has an infinitely better chance of one day ending up as president of the Spanish government than you. This is not a politically trivial matter. On the contrary Voters will be left with the heresy that Díaz unleashed against the dominant Spanish dogma long after the Catalan "terrorists" have forgotten about the amnesty, the Koldo case, and such... and this will cost him at the polls It will cost you. And I would add one more thing. I didn't know it until this week, but even though Ayuso is too Trumpian for my taste, of the two I would much rather spend an evening with her, eating and drinking past one, two and three, until dawn
