What Amanda Fernández was like, her second mother: “She still asks me to sign her up for judo”

PalmThey didn't see the mother without her daughter, because until she was three, she clung to her "like a footprint": "She didn't want to go with anyone; she was on me all day long, clinging to my hair, wherever we went. I was finished!" says Catalina Rubí, from Manacor, mother of Amanda Fernández Rubí, general secretary of the Socialists of Mallorca. The mother speaks quickly and strings together images while she reminisces, and between anecdotes and memories, she sighs and says: "Oh! Mothers, let's do what we can." And almost without meaning to, Rubí's voice is the voice of all mothers.

The mothers do what they can, yes, even getting into a pigsty because their almost two-year-old daughter had no better idea than to go and inspect it: "We were going crazy with friends and other children, and as she was always attached to me, that day I told her to go play with the children! We found something inside the soll. What an inn, because pigs bite! I went in to get her, I still don't know how.

Amanda was an heiress for eight years; then Savina and Carlos arrived. According to her mother, and surely because her age dictated it, the politician acted as an older sister with enthusiasm: "She helped me a lot with the children. She organized projects, made games for them and they both really enjoyed being with her. When she got a little older, she suddenly started partying with her man, with Sabina and Carlos everywhere! So much so, that Amanda has wanted to be a teacher all her life. And who knows if this comes from his father: his godfather, known as 'the Madrid doctor', was stationed here and had nine children.

Of Amanda, Catalina remembers that she was a very good student and liked "almost" everything. Aside from school, the doll did many extracurricular activities, and this mother and daughter, who can't have, now, a better relationship, never agreed on one: music. "She wanted to go to everything, everything! Even now she jokes and tells me she wants me to sign her up for judo, because she didn't get it... I made her go to music school and the poor doll didn't have a good time because she didn't like anything. I regret it. It's one thing to like singing and dancing," and another. And she's completely right, Catalina.

In fact, at home they are "very much into singing": "We had a stereo system and the first person who came in would turn it on. In the bathroom we also had a cassette player, and I remember Amanda and Savina grabbing the deodorant bottle as if it were a microphone and pretending to be singers. They could spend hours.

Some things that Rubí highlights about Amanda's personality is that she is "very competitive" when it comes to sports: "She doesn't like walking or running... She'll play volleyball, beach tennis and things like that." She also says that she is a "hard-working" woman, and that this could already be seen when she was younger, as a student, and when she started working as a teacher and, later, in politics: "She has a taste for things," her mother points out. And perhaps there is nothing better than having a daughter like that: "Amanda enjoys it, you don't feel ashamed. What you want, as a mother, is for your children to be happy, and with her this is guaranteed. It's always good. Or so I think. What I know for sure is that, when I grow up, I want to be like her." That's what Catalina said, and that's how it has been written.