After the fall of Madrid in 1939, Celia Gámez, queen of the revue who swayed to the rhythm of “Come here and I will teach you to dance the cachumbambé,” sang that fascist chotis: “Of sickles and hammers, and soviet / It was in that Madrid with raised fists, where they shouted / They will not pass! / The Marxists said / We have already passed! Gámez responded to the slogan of a resistant Madrid with a cocky and victorious grimace. We remember.
Today on a wall of the Serpis river bed in Gandía, we read “They will not pass”; to the side, the drawing of a telescopic sight; a little further on, “Moors out.” The hieroglyph has a simple resolution and its interpretation reaches directly to the gut that breaks in my heart: an anti-fascist motto is emptied of content, it is detached from its historical reason, to represent just the opposite of what it meant; The values and words of a Spain that wanted to be more fair, egalitarian and democratic are confused with the xenophobic message in a reality where the weak repel the weakest.
They tune our language, forgetting history and legitimizing the principles of those who crush us. I don’t know if the authors – perhaps also the authors – of the graffiti are ignorant and have not studied the history of Spain in their academic curricula, or they are so evil that they turn the meaning of things around to cover up every lie and perpetuate the powers always through a mask of rebellion that, by the way, was also useful to the rebellious forces in ’36.
Meanwhile, not even to maintain manners, Ayuso and Feijóo do not offer their condolences to the family of Marisa Paredes and the right uses the dirty cultural war of beef steaks, drink whatever comes out of your gonads even if you drive, the horror of cancellation – especially if those canceled are educated white men with a fine sense of humor and honor -, the false complaints of resentful women, the abomination of the papal State, the payoffs and the Spain breaks down while negotiating with Junts to protect what really matters: the economic interests of the energy companies, which are neither yours nor mine, but those of those who have always had the upper hand. For the PP this alliance is not a betrayal, and the sky is no longer falling over our heads due to the fact that Puigdemont is a fugitive and a criminal and does not speak Spanish, Spanish, Spanish.
Celia Gámez’s cocky chorus reminds me that they never left or that they have already pass it like a serene drop, from above and below. We have a lot to do and, although it may seem paradoxical – the fight against rancidity is not incompatible with the criticism of what dehumanizes us: there are different forms of rancidity and bad taste – I do not wish you any Merry Christmas wrapped in creepy reindeer sweaters with the bemba will colorbut rather, from the democratic memory, the taste for celebrations and the confusing tangle between what is popular and what is patriotic, I share with you bells from Bethlehem, shits of luck and nougat from Jijona. From a red agnostic Spanishness, distrustful of globalization, cultural gentrification and technological papanatism—the digital transition goes alone—I ask by 2025 that the cheesecakes become cheesecakes again and workaholics alienated people I also always ask for peace and respect for Palestine, and an ecological, educational and memorial ministry, aimed at criticizing technocapitalism and protecting analogous species in danger of extinction.