In recent weeks, a video format has become fashionable, particularly on local Vox accounts, consisting of going to a neighborhood and counting the number of businesses run by foreigners, contrasting them with “classic” businesses. In a scene worthy of the novel Submission from the French Houellebecq, we easily speak of “invasion” and the hatred of those who are different, of those who were born elsewhere, is normalized. But always to those who were born in Latin America or the Maghreb of course, with the expatriates guiris with studies which proliferate in central neighborhoods like Ciutat Vella do not dare.
Why have we normalized this? I read the most precise response from the writer Jorge Dioni in his essay Pornocracy, when he explains that “spankings always hurt a little less when imagined on other people’s ass. » And, if this period of gray and uncertain future is characterized by anything, it is by the spankings that we receive every day, especially young people. In the end, it all comes down to one brilliant Gene Hackman scene in The Mississippi is burning. After admitting to having poisoned his black neighbor’s mule because he had not been able to save enough to own one, he admits: “If you are no better than a black man, you are no better than anyone.” » There will always be someone worse and that comforts us.
According to data from the 2024 municipal register, almost one in five people residing in Valencia was born outside of Spain. And, in an extremely high proportion, they are hard workers like you and me. The other day, Jean, my Ecuadorian hairdresser, who moved to Valencia with his family in search of a better future, called me to ask me to be his model during a trial he had at a new hair salon. I went there and because he’s so good at what he does, they ended up hiring him. In my neighborhood, many of the people I interact with are of foreign origin. And, although you’ve heard some at Vox say that they don’t generate community, that’s a lie as a cathedral.
Near my house, there is a restaurant run by the Japanese woman who taught my mother to use chopsticks. At the local Turkish kebab shop they make the best tiger nut sweets I’ve ever had. Across the street, exiled Palestinians prepare probably the best shawarma in Spain, which they prepare early in the morning. The barber downstairs where I get my beard done is called Zubair and he’s from Pakistan. The first thing he did when starting his business was to put the senyera in gratitude to the land that had welcomed him. Without forgetting the Georgians who have decided to bring their gastronomy and wines to the neighborhood or the Chinese who run the traditional bars and perpetuate the city’s popular lunches and recipes.
Valencia has many problems, that’s also true. Among them, massive and uncontrolled tourism, leaders who govern for the owners of tourist apartments or a blatant lack of investment in transport and infrastructure to cope with the demographic changes of recent years. Also, an environmental policy from the Middle Ages, which pushes Valencia back as a European reference in terms of sustainable mobility and pedestrianization and puts it back on the map of pollution and traffic jams. Of course, with a magnificent Christmas tree.
In a city where crime is decreasing every year and immigration balances the demographic pyramid, more than ever we need much less racism and much more investment, including in integration plans and effective security policies. And of course, anyone who commits a crime must pay. But anyone who uses this as a pretext to surrender to the most powerful and justify their inaction needs to get their act together. Our lives depend on it, if we truly fight for the Valencia of the future, that of all of us.
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