Rebeca Argudo: falsifying reality

When in 1968, the Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar recovered from hemiplegia after an accident, none of his relatives dared to tell him that he no longer held the post of Prime Minister. Thus, he left the hospital to be comfortably installed at the residence … official, not in any other. And, like someone who doesn’t want it, they got involved and ended up creating a reality to suit them: they began by disguising it, making it send false correspondence and making it sign useless documents; They continued to receive advice from collaborators who no longer had any function, organizing fictitious meetings where everyone feigned diligence, recording fake television news for themselves. They even ended up publishing a single copy of the newspaper on demand (the director of “Diario de Noticias”, one of his great friends, went to the printing house every day at dawn to remove any reference to his successor, Marcelo Caetano) or by hiring actors to celebrate his arrival in an official car to vote in simulated legislative elections. And so the farce lasted until his death, in 1970. The other day I was thinking about Salazar and this crazy story, watching a Pedro Sánchez appear, disconnected from reality, who proudly celebrated his success and announced the presentation of a report entitled nothing less than “Cumpliendo”. He seemed to me like a little Salazar, so foreign to everything, dabbling in his ideal world, the one where everything goes well and where everyone admires and thanks him, messianic and Apollonian in his own eyes. Irreplaceable. The one where there is always a Sarah Santaolalla at your service to argue that if there are fewer and fewer independent workers, it is a symptom that the economy is going like crazy (better than ever), an Oscar Puente who, faced with accusations of harassment and sexual abuse in his ranks, says that what matters is the reaction of the party (and not of the victims, as is vulgar), a Marta Flich who, faced with the umpteenth case of corruption, speaks to Spanish baby television stolen fifty years ago (the mad news). A TikTok recommending books and songs (Leire Díez and Vicente Fernández arrested), coverage as man of the year (19 companies and several ministries registered by the UCO), absolute commitment to feminism (another, the mayor of Bardabás, resigns for workplace harassment and cover-up of sexual harassment). His people, of course, like those Portuguese grooms, obsessively celebrating so many uchronistic successes just to see him happy. May this government feel good in Spain. The difference (subtle, barely perceptible) is that these kneeling courtiers created vaudeville around a decrepit convalescent whom they did not want to upset. Here, he himself has put the fictional artifact to work for him, with the enthusiastic collaboration, of course, of willing media prostitutes and self-serving flatterers, trying to convince the rest of us to believe them before our very eyes (and in our pockets). They made him believe that he still held the position, while he clings to it and wants us to believe that it is because we want it and for our own good. If we’re careless, Salazar, it’s us and not him.

Session limit reached

• Access to Premium content is open through the establishment you are in, but there are currently too many users connected at the same time. Please try again after a few minutes.

try again

You have exceeded the session limit

• You can only start three sessions at a time. We have closed the oldest session so you can continue browsing the rest without limits.

Continue browsing