Uncomplicated youth

In the midst of the age discrimination controversy, President Macron goes ahead and appoints the youngest Prime Minister of the French Fifth Republic. The decision angered some of his future presidents, because they interpreted it as a negative signal for their thinking about the upcoming electoral race in the Elysee. They fear that they will miss the train and that their experience will be read as a burden in these times of uncertainty.

Perhaps Macron also wanted to emulate himself, and see himself reflected in who could become his dolphin. Think about the motivation he had when he launched into the presidential race 10 years ago, also the youngest. Then circumstances forced him to give up. It is already known. Political concession leads to abandoning many projects and some principles. Looking at the profile of the new tenant of the Palau de Matignon, there are more things that bring them together than that drive them apart. Including the taste of power.

Lucky son

Gabriel Attal de Corres (Clamart, 16 March 1989) wears his mother's surname with a vengeance, despite the lack of a tradition in his country and serves the table inherited from his father as models of thanksgiving. He is the lucky son with the education he received, and was always the youngest who achieved everything. It made itself known by showing that age is not a value in itself because, deep down, as Graham Greene said, we are always the same age.

Perhaps for this reason, what distinguishes the new French Prime Minister is his pioneering nature, his humanitarian culture, the influence of his parents, the boldness of his personality, the boldness of his passion and the state of his youth. A man of his time who considered versatility in all personal aspects normal, starting with the sexual, but he resisted accepting what most of his contemporaries accepted: that leisure was more important than work. This is how most of his peers in Spain understand him. Especially after the passage of the pandemic turned into a hurricane of our discontent.

Gabriel Attal is a person of ease, direct communication, and straight to the point. “The chaos is over,” he said upon his arrival at the Ministry of Education, to which he belongs. A supporter of restoring order in classrooms, in the five short months he held the portfolio, he took up the fight against bullying in schools, banned the abaya as a garment he considered religious and encouraged corrections needed to overcome the low reading comprehension rates cited in the PISA report. Hence its great popular acceptance.

Without avoiding controversy

Even coming from socialism and considering himself a progressive, he does not leave aside the more controversial aspects and confronts them, because he knows that they are what give wings to the growing far right and to the threatening populism, which he will confront. Which it will face in the upcoming European elections.

This position of detachment from the politically correct, defended by condemnation, has won favor with ultra-conservatives who have approved Macron's controversial immigration law. We will see whether this transversal way of integrating perspectives, beyond ideologies, helps overcome major challenges. But the truth is that if there is anyone who can do it, it is this simple group that only understands youth as a symbol of boldness and movement. Not as a right.