To my friends and relatives of the right: "We are also your people"
Happily, the world is diverse, and even in moments of polarization, people of one ideology or another continue to mix more or less without problems. It is for this reason that I am happy to have good friends and relatives who are on the right, and when I say this I cannot help but think of those verses from the insurmountable 'Elegy to Salvatore Giuliano', by Jaume Vidal Alcover, collected in El dolor de cada dia (1957): “if I am not / one of those of whom I speak to you, / I do not know why I am not, / but son and grandson and brother and even friend, / for I have their blood”. The poem continues, but I will leave it here: this just serves me to begin this letter to my friends and relatives who are considering voting for the right in the next state elections.
To begin with, I would like to tell you that for you I want the same as for myself: that you may always do whatever you wish. In life and in an election. Freedom, individual and collective, is one of the highest values to which we can aspire as people and as a country. It happens, however, that all our actions have an echo in the world that surrounds us, and the decisions we make, apparently innocuous or even dressed in a certain neutrality or moderation, can have a devastating impact, in terms of human rights and also material terms, on the lives of many other people.
On the upcoming November 29th, the vote is not about whether Pedro Sánchez should continue or not. It is not even important whether the State should continue to have a soi-disant progressive government, since, setting aside symbologies, the measures of the current PSOE and those of the PP from twenty or thirty years ago are not so different. But they certainly are with respect to the current PP, which is the only liberal or conservative force in Europe willing to make a pact with the far-right Vox. I insist: the only one in Europe. And, since an absolute majority for the PP is almost unimaginable, with the polls in hand, it is important to visualize things as they are.
Voting for the PP, right now, means voting for a coalition government with Vox. It means the annihilation of any protection or support for our own language and culture. It means telling women again that they cannot decide what to do with their own bodies. It means endangering, as has happened in Italy, the status of families with non-heterosexual parents, or the possibility for these families to access adoption. It means direct censorship of books and plays. It means making it harder for people in the LGBTIQ+ community to access healthcare in areas such as HIV protection medication (the blessed PrEP!) and other STI prevention programs. It means, at the end of the day, becoming part of the Reactionary International led by Trump and supported by Netanyahu, Meloni, and all those who will follow. And waging war.
In these elections, and always, you would do well to vote for what interests you most. I would like you to also think about women, about Catalan speakers, about the queer people in your circle. We are also your people. And I don't know if we have ever needed you as much as we do now.
