It has always been said that chocolates are a safe gift, that they never fail, that everyone likes them and that they are not too compromising. Except, of course, when inside the box there are not chocolates but banknotes. Then it is no longer a detail, it is a declaration of intentions. And quite vintage, by the way.
The 20,000 euros inside a box of chocolates that a businessman from Cala Millor sent to the Director General of Coasts is a scene typical of an old-fashioned script. And yet, here we are. The year is 2026.
“There is no time that does not return”, my grandmother used to say. And I had always thought it was one of those clichés used to talk about bell-bottom trousers. But it turns out they are also used for corruption with an old-fashioned air. Because one thing is that there are small corruptions – which apparently there always are, with more or less sophistication – and another is this farcical staging, almost endearing if it weren't because it's scary.
And I thought we wouldn't see scenes like the hundreds of thousands of euros inside a can of Cola Cao that the manager of the Consortium for Economic Development of the Balearic Islands had buried in her garden, as if it were a pirate's treasure. Or those sticky notes with figures written on them that a public official supposedly showed, stuck to his hand so that businessmen would understand the price of each favor.
I thought we would no longer remember the providential phone call from that deputy who warned a mayor that he would be arrested and then claimed they had only commented that “it was Monday and he was in his office”. A phrase so bland that many framed it in the first person. I thought we would almost forget the councilman who didn't want to marry homosexuals, but paid for orgies with men with the municipal card. Or the signature of the ‘em-palma-do’ duke that the king's son-in-law made. Or the sculptures that were said to be given to the city and had such inflated production costs that there was enough to go around. Or the dinners organized by politicians for friends and acquaintances to whom they said that endearing “Eat, eat, the Government is paying”, an autochthonous version of the all-you-can-eat buffet, but with public money.
All of this is part of an imaginary that we thought was overcome, like the fax or cassette tapes. We had gotten used to the idea that corruption, if it were to exist, would be more technological, more discreet, more 21st century. With shell companies, opaque transfers, and unpronounceable names. But no: there are still those who bet on the box of chocolates.
The box of chocolates, who thinks of that? Well, whoever thinks that nothing has changed so much, that control mechanisms are more decorative than effective, that there will always be a corner to pull off the trick. Surely it occurs to those who trust in collective amnesia, in our ability to get outraged or to laugh about it for a couple of days and then turn the page. Perhaps my grandmother was right. There is no time that does not return.