Psycholeaders

There must be something strange about political power when it's so prone to fostering corruption. It would seem that any sensible person is sufficiently aware, or that, given everything we've seen in Spanish, Catalan, and island democracies in recent decades—with imprisoned politicians, investigations, raids, recordings, accounting documents proving bribes, etc.—any reasonably sane person would know that things can go very wrong, and that one can end up not only in prison but also disgraced. And it's not just the history in all political parties that should make everyone more astute, but also the numerous examples provided by fiction, whether based on 'real events' or not, or that form of fiction that international corruption cases ultimately become; for example, when an American politician—or French, or from wherever—ends up in prison because of their malpractice, and now also because of their sexual misconduct.

Anyone with a decent memory knows how the González government ended up, the Aznar ministers (including Jaume Matas), Rajoy and his mysterious 'M. Rajoy' in the Bárcenas papers, the entire immense—and so memorable—dirthole of Unió Mallorquina, the ethically discredited monarchy, not to mention the countless rotten affairs of so many town halls that have also filled the courts and the pages of the press. That the justice system and the judiciary punish all this (with varying degrees of success) doesn't seem to frighten anyone. Or perhaps we must conclude that corruption is intrinsic to the political system, certainly more so in 'ours' than in other parts of the world.

The system—or the powerful's environment, or the climate surrounding political decision-making bodies—must be fostering, with excessive toxicity, situations that encourage temptation and deceit. But we shouldn't rule out another hypothesis: that the political game is currently so demented and grotesque, so impossible and insane, that only certain types of people could possibly be tempted to engage with it.

Politics has become such a toxic, distorted, demented, and psychologically dangerous environment that it can only attract, right now, a certain rare breed of psychopaths. The art of governing has never been easy, but in our time it has become so surrounded by dangers, paranoia, toxic parties, cowardly ideologies, and such a vast and complex social problem that it has reached colossal proportions. Therefore, corruption goes hand in hand with the psychology of individuals who, only with a dose of insane and colossal ego, can aspire to govern not just a party, but a country. And to do it well!

This breed of people can only function even moderately effectively—and survive months and years in politics—with inflated egos, and it is there that the illusion of impunity and omnipotence is forged, inevitably leading to all manner of disgraceful maneuvers. Economic corruption goes hand in hand with an unhealthy degeneration of political work and the corresponding parliamentary debate, the crisis of the sensible press, and the fixation on the algorithmic demagoguery of social media.