Last week of campaign. Their own surveys published by the press (the CIS eats separately) coincide in pointing out that the socialists They are already going down the hill because up on their street the party is over. the PSCwhich, like the felled tree that sprouts, still has life, makes itself available to Pedro Sanchez to lead the counteroffensive and choose to start on the front of culture, where it is known to be more or less strong and where it can boast of lustrous endorsements such as that of Joan Manuel Serratsinger-songwriter in the reserve and a man who, as is known, gets along with almost everyone.
Serrat occupies a front row seat at the meeting that the Catalan socialists have convened at their headquarters with a hundred or so creators and representatives of the cultural industries of the country (reproducing the complete list here would take up a lot of space and mentioning only a few would be rude to the rest). The event opens with a performance by a guitar and double bass duo from the Taller de Músics, but the trail of their elegant jazz is soon buried by the chords of an electoral ‘jingle’ of demodé air in which the chorus “el camí cap a la dreta és equivocat” is repeated. Is about ‘Don’t turn around’a song that the PSC commissioned in 1993 to the long-awaited Josep Maria Bardagi and in whose recording artists such as Moncho, Loles León, Carlos Segarra, Ramoncín and… Albert Boadella.
Little things
That the Socialists have resorted to a song from a campaign from 30 years ago says something somewhat alarming about the character of these elections. miquel iceta, Minister of Culture and number two on the PSC list for Barcelona, puts it in these terms: “We are in a battle. There are those who have wanted to declare war on culture and that is why we need to make an effort in self-defense.” A few hours earlier, and this is how he himself remembers it, Iceta was at the funeral of cartoonist Francisco Ibáñez, at which a song by Joan Manuel Serrat, ‘Aquelas pequeñas cosas’, played precisely. “Culture is this infinite sum of little things,” says the minister in a lyrical outburst that the singer-songwriter thanks him with a smile.
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Also the head of the list, Meritxell Batet, remembers Ibáñez and quotes a cartoon in which Mortadelo appears writing the aphorism “Reading seriously harms ignorance”. Batet doesn’t have the rhetorical punch of Iceta to handle himself gracefully in the optimistic register, so, like southern preachers, seeks to win over the audience by announcing hell and tribulations. “The PP is shamelessly delivering culture to the extreme right and thus endorses censorship and cancellation & rdquor ;, he assures.
Equally serious is shown in the final turn the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, which requires “forcefulness & rdquor; in the face of “such a severe threat & rdquor ;. Unlike Iceta and Batet, he does not quote Ibáñez, but it is not difficult to visualize in his indignant speech one of those ‘mortadelianos’ sandwiches with pig heads, Chinese ideograms, bombs about to explode and exclamation points. Culture of the best.