La Voz de Galicia – September 20, 2019 →
Well, it seems that pride has won. Immodesty has won. As if there were no rush to solve small quotidian injustices. As if in all areas of life we had four attempts to solve our problems.
It seems that our state politics are not so different from those eternal championships of Subastado* in my village bar, where the same men always played, always ended up screaming, and if they did not come to blows, it was because of the local authority: the woman who owned the bar. Because it seems as if the only people able to mediate and move matters forward were those powerful widows who seemed to be afraid of nothing.
Yesterday, speaking about the elections with my mother after her card game at the widows’ association, I thought it would not be such a bad thing to set up a political party made up of the superwomen who define our history. Rosalia de Castro’s “widows of those alive and dead” remain active, silently surviving whatever befalls them, living with barely enough to make it, sustaining life out of nothing. The macro murals of Joseba Muruzábal (Yoseba MP) do more great work than any other institution: they make these women visibilize and represent them at a well-deserved scale.
But what would happen if there were a political party lead by these invisible heroines? A party formed by all those superwomen around us, who struggle and negociate at a personal level for what really matters? Then Maruxa and I would vote again.
But we continue at the abyss of a pause. Waiting with reluctance the championship taking place on November 10, watching the game being played at the bar that is the Spanish Congress and speculating on which typical male will get to elevate his team and win the trophy for Tute* to the national level…
*TN—“Tute” is one of the most popular Spanish deck games for two to four players. To win a game, it is necessary to collect the four knights (Tute of knights) or the four kings (Tute of kings), or reach a total of 101 points by adding the value of the cards of the tricks won. “Subastado” is a popular variant on “Tute” where there is an auction in which players bet—sometimes real money—on the score they are able to get with their cards.