The club of dead statesmen

30 years ago, the Australian filmmaker Peter Weir premiered a film of great emotion and beauty in that year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In fact, he acquired almost classic timbres shortly after reaching the billboard. Its title is The club of the dead poets . Set three decades ago (1959), it tells the story of a group of students from an American school (Welton Academy) that bases its teachings on tradition, honor, discipline and excellence.

With the new course, a former student, John Keating, who masterfully interprets Robin Williams, who will break the monorail of the institution thanks to his love of poetry and generosity, is incorporated as a teacher. Faced with the sacralized routine of repeated lessons without wanting, of the monotony of the manual, Mr. Keating encourages his students to enjoy poetry to enliven their senses and make their lives extraordinary. Making his own some verses by Robert Frost - "Two paths opened before me. I took the least traveled: that made a difference" - seduces his disciples to vibrate with literature at all times and places.

A true revolution between one's own vocational enjoyment and the fascination of students, on the one hand, and academic resistance and paternal perplexity, on the other. That communion works miracles on students who, in the light of poetry, illuminate hidden talents. But it also originates the tragedy of the proselyte to whom his passion for letters leads him to collide abruptly with the rocky authoritarianism of the father who restricts his personality under threats. As a result of the tragic outcome of this collision of characters, Professor Keating is expelled without honors or recognition from colleagues and rectors of the school. In spite of this, in the goodbye of the silent desperation, while he silently retires, the schoolboys dismiss him by saluting the famous stanzas of " Oh, captain, my captain " of the elegy in which Walt Whitman evokes the arrival of the corpse from Lincoln to Illinois after being killed in the shout "Sic semper tyrannis!" ("So always the tyrants!").

"For you flags are raised and the clarines cry out. / They are for you the bouquets, the crowns, the ribbons. / For you the crowd swirls, / for you cries, for you his soul calls / and the anxious look, to see you , it is recreated, "thus honoring the exempt rapsoda to the liberating president of the slaves and to whom, under that pretext, he forged a nation that could have become a disintegrated confederation. Opposite to the secession of the slave slave south, he uttered some prophetic and eternally present words: "A house divided against itself cannot be maintained. (...) I don't expect the Union to dissolve - I don't expect it to collapse - but I do hope that is no longer divided. It will be entirely one thing or the other. "

But, if the master dreamer resurrected those dead poets from the parnassus to exhort their schoolchildren to "take the roses while you can, / fast time flies. / The same flower that you admire today, / tomorrow will be dead", it is no less urgent to revive to those statesmen who were not content to do what they could, but what they owed. Unlike those others who, cataloged of great men in attention to their positions , were very small to judge by their facts and actions. Just what happens with the prolonged political blockade in Spain. In this dispute, the sarcasm of Romanones becomes effective when Melquíades Álvarez questioned him from the rostrum in these terms: "Do you know your honor, Mr. Count, what Gladstone did in similar circumstances?", Referring to the reformist deputy to the great British liberal statesman William Gladstone Heard which, despite his pronounced deafness, the many times minister and parliamentarian turned to the seats of his party and slipped between his teeth: "Here, with these clothes, I would like to see Gladstone!"

An unpredictable Sánchez, who moves his desire for power, seeks to expand his majority without clarifying what his model of Spain is or what paths he will take in economics

That non-existence of statesmen, without reaching the extreme of asking them to be able to hear the beating in the distance of the hooves of the horse of history and capable of grabbing the reins of the steed when, galloping tended, passes by, jump to the mount and put on the stirrups, as the chancellor of iron Bismarck said, explains the governance crisis in Spain for a year and a half, even if he does not have the trademark patent. Just look at the United Kingdom and keep an eye on Italy, despite President Mattarella's patch to Salvini's broken to force elections by believing them won.

In this regard, there is no greater and more direct concern than that of the acting president, Pedro Sánchez. First he mounted a destructive censorship motion in May 2018 - when the Constitution imposes it to be constructive - against a rabid Rajoy with the strict objective of going to the polls with the benefit of facing them from the Government, which allowed him to be the list more voted, although 53 seats of the absolute majority. Satisfied that purpose, even in the stunted of his triumph , he undertook a deliberately failed investiture to undertake a kind of second round this November to, from the same position of primacy as in April, hit the stretch that allows him to govern alone with agreements to convenience.

There lies the whole mystery of the year and a half lost from the deadly scorpion sting that shook a Rajoy who approached a few weeks earlier to help him ford the river. All this after disqualifying you personally - "you are not decent" - and "is not no" and how many times should you say no to your request that the PSOE abstain to unlock your investiture. Sufficently, Sánchez reached the obsequious point of offering Rajoy to expand the 155th post applied after the coup d'etat perpetrated by Puigdemont and Junqueras against the "Le Pen Catalan" Torra (Sánchez dixit). This informed him that Rajoy would enhance, as opposed to Rivera, his character as a statesman. Once defenestrated after the deadly sting of the "motion of censure Frankenstein", the already president Sánchez would receive in La Moncloa a Torra that entered with the yellow bow on the flap and would subscribe with him the claudication of Pedralbes, of which he would deny urgently by the announcement of concentration sponsored by the center-right in Madrid's Plaza de Colón.

Four months of simulation to theatricalize his apparent willingness to agree, when it was nonexistent as was waiting for Godot. Sanchez has acted as that poor English girl who, according to the memorable Dr. Johnson, had a cousin in Barbados who, in a letter, expressed her wish that he would visit her by explaining the comforts she enjoyed and the happiness of her situation. In view of this, he undertook the long journey and, knocking on the door, his cousin was very surprised at his presence, affecting him how it had crossed his mind to travel there. "Well, because you invited me," he replied. "But," said the cousin, "I never thought you could come." At the first opportunity, after suffering those of Cain housed in a shed, the innocent set sail back to England at the first opportunity.

This is what happened with Sánchez's offers to supposedly carry out his investiture after accepting the high order of Felipe VI. In fact, it has been taken as a mere formalism to make time for the voting that, with all the springs of power at your service, hopes to win from the street. Of course it would be neither the first nor the last aspirant who, confusing reality and desire, was lost.

Like Vladimir and Estragon, the protagonists of Waiting for Godot, his "preferred partner" Pablo Iglesias, as in the work of Samuel Beckett, has been waiting in vain for his incorporation into an impossible coalition government. In his dismay, he has ventured his impotence deliriously with occurrences such as doing the test of governing alimón for a few months. If Sanchez is not satisfied, he puts it in almoneda, as if it were a store garment, without losing the PSOE the parliamentary support of United We can.

Sanchez ambitions the 10-N a blank check in which everything is allowed

If this is the case with UP, the same applies to the center-right with whom he has not had the slightest interest in doing anything. Beyond dimes and diretes of each other, I could have promoted a great coalition with the PP in line with which Rajoy raised the PSOE or an alliance with Cs in parallel with the programmatic embrace that Sánchez and Rivera gave in 2015 At the time of truth, the orange formation could not have said no at the time of truth. Nor could the German Social Democrats after questioning it in the campaign and then justifying its rectification for reasons of State perfectly understandable by their bases and voters . It was that same greatness of sight that led Lincoln to incorporate his three rivals in 1860.

In the April appointment, the electorate gave Sanchez the huge opportunity to agree on the right and left, and has missed it so as not to opt for the elections he has pursued boldly giving the appearance of centrality. With this, an unpredictable Sánchez, to whom he moves exclusively his unscrupulous desires for power, without anyone knowing what to expect from him, seeks to expand his majority without clarifying what his model of Spain is or what paths he will take in economics. However, one and the other can be presumed. On the one hand, looking at Navarra and on the other, observing his pleasure in multiplying the cost and burdening the fiscal pressure on the shelves of work income. He disguises him with the trickster that he will carry luck on some great fortunes that can afford to "vote with his feet", that is, leave and put his flows to the good collection of countries with tax temperatures more benign than steamy Spain.

In this way, playing with a confused public opinion, Sanchez ambitions this 10-N a blank check with which to march freely in one direction or in the opposite direction and in which everything is allowed in a time in which they have disappeared from map statesmen long look and firm step. Only improvised leaders remain who shine for their incompetence and those who, in their blind partisanship, do not mind thinning the coexistence or marketing with whatever is necessary.

On this slope, a policy is rolling downhill that moves away more and more from the dignity due and respect for the citizen. Vote what you vote, there is always the albur of those who are interested in power as an end in itself. In the antipodes of the statesman who suspects himself when they begin to like the privileges of power, which is only fought with "a specially developed alert spirit", as highlighted by the great intellectual and Czech president Václav Havel. Worthy of swelling, without any doubt, both the club of the dead poets and the pantheon of the great statesmen. "Oh captain, my captain ...", who lamented in his orphanhood both that immense poet and those schoolchildren of the Welton Academy.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Mariano Rajoy
• Spain
• PSOE
• United We Can
• United Kingdom
• Citizens
• Philip VI
• Italy
• Navarre
• PP
• Pablo Iglesias
• Pedro Sanchez

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