On the horn, forced by the chaos unleashed at the border and on the eve of Christmas Eve.

But finally the two parties reached a consensus yesterday to avoid hard Brexit, the worst option for all.

After almost 10 months of negotiation against the clock and just a week before the end of the transition period, Brussels and London closed the technical agreement that should define their commercial and political relationship as of January 1.

Now this very complex pact, substantiated in one hundred

Cough of pages crammed with minute clauses contested word for word, must be endorsed by parliaments: British and European.

But no one expects any other horizon than the approval of a text that can well be considered historic, a milestone in diplomatic perseverance after a frustrating succession of failures, denials, restarts, extensions and elections that claimed the heads of two prime ministers. Beyond the skill of the negotiators, it should be recognized that the agreement would surely have collapsed without the social pressure exerted by the dystopian scenes experienced in Dover, near the United Kingdom's border with France;

that is to say, with the European Union.

Queues of trucks stuck for many hours on Christmas Eve, unwitting victims of the late negotiation between the French and British authorities on account of a double mess: the imminence of an undesirable Brexit without agreement and the emergence of the new strain of covid that it has caused the isolation of the United Kingdom.

Among these carriers, several thousand Spaniards were detained, who complained of their neglect until France decided to reopen the border, not without imposing health controls.

Traffic slowly resumed.

The testimony of many of them, who had to relieve themselves under trucks and beg for food amid clashes with police out of desperation, was outrageous - these kilometer checkpoints were only a preamble to what could happen if Brexit occurred whitout deal.

The abrupt closure of the borders would have unleashed even greater chaos on the border, apart from the economic impact it would have had on the own trade balance and that of others, especially the Spanish one.

That an emblematic British supermarket chain would have to ration sales, activating the self-fulfilling prophecy of panic to shortages due to the accumulating fever of the population, was another preview of the disaster of a hard Brexit.

And those who voted deceived by lies spread, among others, by their current prime minister would suffer it first. The United Kingdom and the EU thus conclude a divorce that began in 2016 with an irresponsible referendum called by Cameron that split the country in two by the narrow majority favorable.

It remains to know the fine print - surely it will not satisfy anyone at all - but the divorce will be consummated amicably after countless disagreements.

And that's already great news.

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