Half of the Tramuntana mountain range
The President of the Government, Marga Prohens, took advantage of the general policy debate to adopt an electoralist tone and bring out her most Ayuso-esque register. In this way, she managed, like her admired president of Madrid, to test the citizenry's capacity for vicarious embarrassment. Crude and demagogic, her interventions and replies consisted of a repertoire of falsehoods, half-truths, insults, and disrespect towards the opposition and entire groups of citizens. This past summer, when the mayor of her town decided to make a fool of herself (she is free to do so) and obstruct a demonstration (which is a serious offense under the Penal Code), Prohens disqualified her by saying that was not “her style.” She was right: hers is even lower.
Perhaps the most strident blunder by Prohens, or, in any case, the one that made the most noise, was when she stated that “half of the Serra de Tramuntana arrived by small boat.” It is, of course, an exaggeration and a lie, as well as an offensive way of expressing herself, completely inappropriate for someone who holds the highest political authority in the country, and who, therefore, should know how to watch their language and, above all, take care not to further inflame a social reality that is already tense enough on its own.
Even in the event that what she says were true, one well-intended thing she could do with the people who arrive by boat is to apologize to them and thank them. Apologies because, if they are forced to abandon their countries and risk their lives on terrible crossings, it is due, in large part, to the exploitation and plunder that rich countries—they call them the First World, like the countries of the European Union—perpetrate upon the resources and interests of poor countries—from the global south, where the immigrants who are such a nuisance to President Prohens come from. And thanks, because it is thanks to them that the economy continues to function (the Spanish economy is the fastest growing in the entire eurozone, despite what President Prohens' party says), often at the cost of them doing the jobs that those born here no longer want to do, and in especially precarious conditions. But these jobs that we no longer want to do are essential for the economy to function at a good pace. Furthermore, it is already starting to happen, but soon immigrants, or their sons and daughters, will be architects, lawyers, teachers and professors, doctors, scientists, researchers, senior officials and, sooner or later, presidents of the Government. When that happens, they will find it easy to raise the level of the current president.
Racism is the final level of discredit to which a public representative can descend, even more so if they are entrusted with high government responsibilities. Marga Prohens agrees to it out of necessity, already assumed without dissimulation by the PP leadership, to satisfy partners—the far-right Vox—who enjoy an electoral star that is rising, while the PP's is declining. Those who have harmed the Serra de Tramuntana, and Mallorca, and the Balearic Islands, are not the immigrants who arrive by boat, when they manage to arrive because they haven't drowned—or haven't been drowned—in the sea. They are the real estate speculators, the wholesale developers, and the tourism entrepreneurs who saturate these Islands with an overpopulation of white-skinned, blonde-haired, well-dressed people loaded with money, who love these islands. Unless we get in their way, that is, those of us who live here.
