2020, a fantastic year

Perhaps Post readers do not yet know my obsession with systematically contradicting the common run of mortals, but I swear to you that my natural tendency to live against the current is not what leads me to describe this 2020 as "fantastic," a year that most of my fellow citizens have wanted to leave behind like someone who pira from what the pretentious call "a toxic relationship" or wishes to quickly abandon a restaurant where not even the water meets minimum quality standards. It's not that, dear friends, and I beg your patience for a few paragraphs to demonstrate that 2020 has not only been a great year for humanity but that, due to its transcendence and the challenges it has given us, 2020 will be one of the most extraordinary of our lives. Now that the counter has left it behind, allow me to praise and save it in my own way.

The first grace of 2020, the year in which Covid-19 has injected itself into everyday life, diligently screwing up our freedom of schedules and movements, has been to remind us of something as simple as that the human species, and life, are not something we necessarily have guaranteed. It would be puerile to argue that the more than 50,000 deaths caused by the pandemic in the state (and add to that the figures from other countries in the world) have posed a risky factor for the subsistence of man on the planet. But for the members of my generation ---I'm Generation X, born in 1979--- that is, for the first batch of Catalan citizens who have not suffered either the dictatorship or any armed conflict in our territory, and who have always known prosperity despite the systemic crises of capitalism, Covid-19 has been the first wake-up call to remind us that life is not free, that we mustworksela and guarantee it.

Covid-19 has been the first wake-up call to remind us that life is not free, that you have to work for it and guarantee it.

To point out that existence does not it goes without saying and that the viral imponderables or the climate crises for which we are directly responsible can end up driving us away from our natural environment, does not entail embracing any metaphysics of a nitpicker nor does it imply an exercise of existentialist pose, but rather a point of necessary humility more than opportune for the morale of a species that claims to be eternal and omnivorous with its environment.No one, and especially those of us who have freedom as the first rule of our creed, has liked suffering the restrictions of total, perimeter, regional, and sidereal lockdowns with which all administrations have played at technocracy and, too often, at totalitarianism. But in a world that plays at hyperspeed, where stopping to do something like reflect is a rarity, confinement has given us precious time to dress up as philosophers and think.

But in a world that plays at hyperspeed, where stopping to do something like reflect is a rarity, confinement has given us precious time to dress up as philosophers and think

The monastic stillness has thrown us into boredom (one of the preparatory states for any useful thought), andit has been thanks to boredom and the cloistered condition that we have been able to reflect precisely on how political power has this unhealthy tendency to order our schedules, our working lives, and our existence. It has been precisely because we have put an end to the voracious work and have forced ourselves to live the real solitude of the four walls of home that I have recovered the obligation to think about the need and the obligation to rest and devise better ways of conciliation between work and the time we dedicate to family. After experiencing and certifying as ridiculous that previously dystopian (and attractive!) idea according to which with a mobile phone and a sofa we could travel all over the world and meet whoever we pleased, we have now certified that nothing surpasses the wisdom of touch and face-to-face conversation.

In turn, 2020 has been a fantastic year because it has shown us that, contrary to what progressive nitpickers and conservative monks (who are, as you know, the same species) think, the world works reasonably well. Before a crisis like Covid-19, even in moments when the virus strained or directly overwhelmed our public health system and corpses piled up in hospital corners, we all had the certainty that science would find a solution to mitigate the effects of the virus. I do not buy the classic Kantian thesis according to which humanity progresses towards excellence, but it is a palpable reality that this crisis has been able to be solved through the tools that open society has given us: a system of free business competition endorsed by prestigious international organizations.

In turn, 2020 has been a fantastic year because it has shown us that, contrary to what progressive nitpickers and conservative monks (who are, as you know, the same species) think, the world works reasonably well

It has been this way, fostering an economy where researchers and pharmacists had free rein and ample resources to research at record speed, asThe West has found a vaccine with a very high degree of effectiveness and at a ridiculous price. This reality is not the result or discovery of one day, but a sum that goes through many filters: researchers, doctors, pharmacists, executives, officials, and volunteers from all over the world whohave demonstrated again that the best solution to face a problem is a transparent competitive environment where everyone can fight on equal terms. I am not naive, I insist, and the appearance of the vaccine has also shown that there are first, second, and eighth division countries and that not all of us have equal access to happiness and health. Butto know that you face a crisis with the certainty that you will win it, believe me, is not a minor issue at all.

From burning containers to obeying like a lamb

2020 has been, undeniably, a particular year. In Catalonia, for example, citizens have quickly gone from seeing our young people burning containers in Urquinaona Square and many citizens heading to the airport to stop the country, to seeing everyone obeying power like a lamb and preparing to go running when the Pere Aragonés of the moment told them to. We have also seen how a health system that we believed to be perfect and a mirror of the most civilized world still presented difficulties in facing such a hurtful pandemic, and that seeing our doctors and nurses leave to work abroad after having been educated in our country is not just a worrying fact, but a disgrace and a fatality. 2020 has forced us to get rid of a certain complacency to remind us that we are not a first-world country; I think that's great news.

I write the preceding sentence without the intention of repeating that well-worn pundit's saying that "a crisis is an opportunity," because crises only imply a glimmer of hope if someone remedies them with urgent measures. And 2020 has shown us that, despite living in a world of great comfort, there are still many things that don't work, that not all citizens have the conditions to telework (for the simple fact that not all children in the country have a computer at home) and that there are industries like the cultural one that cannot only survive with public resources, if we don't want a theatrical or musical system that depends exclusively on the administration in power and the alms it disburses in the form of bailouts. There has been much suffering, I insist, but the good news is that 2020 has highlighted that there are trends that the country must change if it does not want to shrink.

There has been much suffering, I insist, but the good news is that 2020 has highlighted that there are trends that the country must change if it does not want to shrink

This spirit also applies to Barcelona. It is undeniable that the Covid-19 crisis has had execrable consequences for the hospitality industry, tourism, and pillars of our city's economy. Butseeing the streets of Barcelona deserted and silent has turned me into an activist against repulsive noise pollutionand so with many citizen practices that until now we conceived as normal and that turn out to be deeply harmful. It is true that, for weeks, walking through the streets of the Gothic Quarter is a frightening, almost phantasmagorical experience, but it also reconciles me with the idea thatthe historic core of the city could be a tourist center of excellence without having to become a flip-flop boulevard and marginalize the inalienable right of Barcelona residents to walk through their beautiful city or sit on a terrace on La Rambla. All this is not nonsense but the need for Catalans to regain their capital.

I do not forget the victims, nor the pain of the families who have not been able to say goodbye to their relatives looking them in the eyes, nor the grandparents who have suffered unacceptable massacres like the one that has turned the Filella residence in Tremp into our particular Chernobyl. All this must be recorded, but I am also a child of my time and heir to the generations that have preceded me: my grandparents and my parents had to face much more difficult, tortuous and even more traumatic situations than those I may have experienced during this pandemic. If the maximum restriction I have to live with consists of wearing a mask, not returning home after ten at night, stopping bothering my fellow citizens of Empordà on weekends or cooking myself a plate of escudella alone on December twenty-fifth, then I'll sign up for that.

My grandparents and my parents had to face much more difficult, tortuous and even more traumatic situations than those I may have experienced during this pandemic

2020 has been a fantastic year because pessimism had tempted many members of my generation to leave Barcelona and abandon our civic involvement with the city. I seriously considered it; I believed that, after so many years of a policy consisting of playing with the people's illusions, of continuous emotional blackmail, and of lowering the bar of dignity and imagination of fellow citizens, it was better to leave for the civilized north of Europe. But in this, 2020 has also been a fantastic year, becauseI have reconciled with Barcelona and much of the blame for this lies in glossing it every Saturday in this Punyalada that does not want to be mortal, but only a pinch on the skin that makes you pay attention to the foam of the days and the life of our streets. From the Eixample, dear readers of thePost, I wish you that 2021 will be even more fantastic.

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