There are gestures that speak louder than a thousand speeches. What happened in the last plenary session of the Balearic Islands Parliament is a clear example: Vox prevented a minute of silence from being observed for the victims of Gaza.We are not talking about discrepancies over budgets or bills, but rather about what should be the lowest common denominator of any democratic society: respect for life and human rights. Not even in the face of grief or death does the far right show empathy or respect. Neither do the hooligans, who often also wrap themselves in flags and slogans, dare to break the minute of silence observed in stadiums for anonymous victims.
This contempt is not an isolated incident. The far right around the world shares an attitude of systematic denial of social and democratic consensus. Trump refused to accept the election result and fueled an assault on the Capitol. Bolsonaro insinuated nonexistent fraud and encouraged demonstrations against the judicial system. Putin governs with repression and the forced silencing of all dissent. Netanyahu, with the genocide he perpetrates in Gaza, makes the violation of international law an everyday act. Milei, in Argentina, destroys basic social consensus in the name of an ultra-liberalism that confuses freedom with the law of the mightiest.
The common thread is the same drive: violence, explicit or implicit. The violence of words, which erodes coexistence; institutional violence, which blocks or destroys common spaces; and real violence, that of bodies and lives lost in wars and repression. When a political force rejects even the simplest rituals of shared respect, such as a minute of silence, what it does is open the door to a society without shared codes, without solid ground.
The Balearic Parliament, let us not forget, is the highest institution of democratic representation on the islands. If, in our common home, pain is allowed to become a reason for confrontation, then not only is the memory of the victims of Gaza insulted, but also the very idea of democracy itself. Democracy is not just about voting every four years; it is about sustaining, day after day, a space in which, above ideological differences, there are rules of respect and coexistence that no one may violate.
In this sense, Vox has made visible what many of us already know: that they do not respect any consensus. Neither that of human rights, nor that of the rules of the democratic game, nor that of minimal collective empathy. Parliament should not normalize these gestures, because the danger of normalization is that, little by little, what seemed unthinkable ends up being tolerated. But it turns out that the Balearic Parliament is presided over by Vox.
Balearic society deserves its democratic space to be firmly defended. Because if a minute of silence is denied today, tomorrow the right to speak, or to disagree, or even to the existence of others could be denied. History has shown us too many times how these paths begin. And too rarely are we able to remember it in time.
