“300” and the constant grudge

I don't know many stories about the epic torrent of the Battle of Thermopylae. The feat of three hundred Spartans gathered in a strait to stop more than a hundred thousand Persians, who could only be defeated by the screams of a mutilated and insulted man, is without parallel. If Churchill said of the RAF pilots who protected England's skies against Nazi aviation that “they have never owed so much to so few,” I cannot even imagine the words King Leonidas would have used to extol the sacrifices of his countrymen. And his own. I'm not surprised that first Frank Miller with his comics, and later Zack Snyder with his film, praised this feat, in which courage and cowardice meet; Loyalty and betrayal. This is the best and worst of the human condition.

It is precisely this duality that leads me to think of 300 to explain something that I think is happening in Spanish politics: that there are three hundred tanocs, or four hundred and five hundred… I don't care exactly how many, but not many, those who turn the bad gears and perpetual hatred. These – and these – are not Spartan warriors. They are politicians, consultants, journalists, businessmen, judges, lawyers (preferably from the state), YouTubers, tweeters, some priests with braids… Their Thermopylae is in Madrid, but they pretend that all of Spain is their battlefield, despite That reality belies them. Examples The recent inauguration of the new Galician president was a tribute to institutional health and good morals. Catalonia, far from the pro-independence noise and Puigdemont's Christianity, is heading into elections without major insults. Even the final campaign in Euskadi, perhaps soured by Bildó's unseemly denial of ETA's terrorism, ended without the insults and rudeness that had become frequent in the Madrid cauldron. So perhaps we should look, like the Persians at Thermopylae, for some shortcut to surprise the unsaved farmers of Zizania. Because they are not heroes. They are toxic.