Help and gratitude, these are the two qualities one expects from someone to whom you have given heaven as a gift. You have given him a position that represents the triumph of professional life and the envy of others. That others envy you … The best in the world. Imagine that the head of government of an important European country appoints you to the position of state prosecutor. It’s not just anything. Choosing your person is an act that involves the utmost trust. Your person reaches the highest altar of your career to which you have decided to devote your life since your most tender and innocent youth. I’m talking about political psychology, which is something no one talks about on TV talk shows. Look, they talk about stupid things and forget the main thing: greed. How not to rush to help your donor when they need a little help. We all will do it. It’s the most human thing in the world to believe that you were put where you were because you deserved it. Those who think they don’t deserve it are much better off. They end up being more careful and not making mistakes. Who in Spain wouldn’t do their boss a favor if their boss needs a little help? Whoever appoints you as a minister, agent, or whoever appoints you expects something from you. Do you hope that your courageous efforts will be the ultimate achievement of the common good of Spain? This no longer exists, which is why the crisis of Spanish democracy has become a black hole. The German-speaking Jewish writer Franz Kafka has already warned us against using state powers to socially kill an individual, and I recommend his reading to those interested in contemplating Spanish political life from the psychology of triumph and failure.
There are no ideologies in Spain, there are just different strategies for gaining power. It is as if the fierce struggle in this twenty-first century between two of the great philosophers of modernity, namely Freud and Marx, has come down to an undisputed winner: Sigmund Freud. We witness the disappearance of Marxism, although the disappearance was never pronounced, and we celebrate the triumph of Dr. Freud’s theses on political psychology. Power is elite fentanyl. Too bad I’ll be left without trying the fentanyl that Social Security can’t do without.
Loving your boss is very necessary to strengthen your soul when you wake up in the morning, when your ass sits in the luxurious leather of your official car, cars that are always bought from rich Germany, and that leather caressing your ass reminds you of who put your ass there. You can’t understand what was going through the state’s attorney’s head without thinking about his ass. Spanish democracy is a debate about donkeys. When I wake up in the morning I thank chance, or God, or someone else, that I was lucky enough not to be loved by any Spanish politician.
My butt always ends up in the same place: on worn-out plastic chairs on public transport in Madrid. Let’s celebrate having our donkeys out there. Do we know how not to be useful and grateful if we sit in noble, dignified and majestic places thanks to the will of our President? There’s a psychological French going on, that’s called gratitude. There were forty years of grateful people. Gratitude returns and disguises itself as responsibility. He was not responsible for what the State Attorney did or did not do. It was something greater, extraordinary, indestructible: he was grateful. It does not matter if he is innocent or guilty. What we do know is that he was always grateful, like so many others.
I wake up in the morning and say to myself: “Imagine you are appointed a minister. You should be grateful for having saved you from a bad life without public pomp.” We cannot afford to be nobody. Judges can’t stand that. Writers can’t afford that. Journalists can’t stand that. Footballers can’t afford that. Artists can’t afford that. The bishops cannot afford that. No one can stand it. That is why Freud made himself the master of this world. I don’t think the man with the round glasses and the low-intensity gaze committed a crime. It wasn’t a crime. It was something we would all do. What is loyalty in politics? Good question. You owe loyalty to those who choose you, not to the strict and greedy conformity of competing with them in your business. Excellence in work is fading, it is a fading light. What shines in Spain is something very ancient, something medieval, something that, to me, is morally backwards: gratitude. It’s about leaning in, it’s about being there. It was represented very well cinematically in the movie “The Godfather”, when Marlon Brando asked this from the owner of the funeral home, in an unforgettable scene, in which Don Vito Corleone says to the owner of the funeral home, I don’t want your money, I want your soul, I want your gratitude, I want your friendship.
I remember the first time I saw her, I say with gratitude. I saw this at the Spanish university in the 1980s where I was studying. And there I saw her in all her splendor, in all her splendor. She is still in the university of the 21st century and will never die. In fact, I was kicked out of university for being just that: ungrateful. Life is a comedy of grateful people and ungrateful people. I was impressed by this quality that I didn’t have. It was a way to say hello, a way to be there in the moments when your boss needed you. How do you know those moments? You must have exceptional talent. Why didn’t I have it? I don’t know, I never knew. You either have that talent or you don’t. So my ass stopped resting on the couch in a college office and started resting where God taught me, but that was one of the great things in my own life. I am tempted by the revolutionary slogan: Spanish men and women, forget your ass, which sits wherever freedom guides you. Either return ungrateful or this country will be extremely boring and fatally mediocre. There is nothing more humble than political gratitude, because it is incompatible with the greatness of life. I was liberated from it thanks to literature, which is the great homeland of the ungrateful.
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