How I love the countryside!

Of the first times I read Don Quixote , one of the most translated and published works in History, which few are able to admit they have not read, although they surely know less about it than they think, one of the things that most caught my attention (and in his youth I obviously did not understand), is when Don Alonso Quijano, a little fed up with adventures and stubbornness, and of the fact that neither Dulcinea has paid him the slightest attention and he has obtained little fame as a knight errant, having to put up with a certain Cide Hamete Benengueli replicating his adventures in a false and crooked manner, like a seedy 'influencer' of the Corralas 2.0 of our time, decides to become a shepherd. To show how well-read the Chief Spy is, it is chapter 67 entitled 'Of the resolution that Don Quixote took to become a shepherd and to follow the country life while the year of his promise passed, with other truly pleasant and good events'. You have to see how good this Cervantes was (I don't know why they want to make him a faggot now), titling, listen.

The fact is that, coming back defeated from Barcelona, ​​where things must have been already bad in Barcelona, ​​they arrived at a meadow where he wanted to see what his life would be like as "the shepherd Quixote," with his noble companion Sancho as "the shepherd Pancino." And he imagined himself among sheep, oaks, rosebushes, and crystalline streams. He indulged himself in poems and the love of shepherdesses, and even brought along his friends from the village: the bachelor, the priest, the master... and it was all a dream of a placid and fulfilling life with no more problems than rhyming a dirge well. In other words, what most city dwellers are longing for after the pandemic , so that if another one comes along, at least they could enjoy some countryside, the mythical rural area, emptier than a politician's head. And without services. Without those trains that used to run all over Spain, even at night. Now they tell you it's great to start working remotely, but the devil's internet isn't even a phone line away, and it's only 3G. Because there's a lot of choice and a lot of operators, but you get to, for example, Castile, to the villages of Alcarria , in areas that aren't even the Urals, and getting coverage is a risky sport, because either you climb the church bell tower or you won't even get AM.

We've abandoned the countryside, the towns, the villages... (what a beautiful word, and how contemptuous and arrogant it has become to call 'villagers' those who feed us in our homes, getting up at dawn seven days a week!). A countryside that we've now discovered, oh heavens, that if it's not cleared, it burns. That if rivers are left to become what nature wants, nature takes revenge on the valleys and gullies, destroying everything there is. And it's all very nice, in theory, until you see that nothing else has been invested in what supposedly brings in the most votes or is the most attractive. Let's bring in high-speed trains where they shouldn't be, and let's forget about Mediterranean and Cantabrian corridors, or connecting Iberian capitals. Let's turn into commuter trains that weren't conceived for that purpose, and let's forget about the trains that truly brought all the villages closer together. Let's talk about operators who pester you with absurd offers at siesta time or dinner time, with hundreds of TV channels we'll never watch, but then you have to go to Tomasa's house to ask for a connection to see when there might be a conference call with Madrid, and to have her set up the pacemaker. All that's missing is the modem hooked up to the landline, making squeaky noises that take us back to the 1980s.

Because it would be great to fill the emptied Spain now devoid of teleworking urbanites, and repopulate towns and villages with affordable housing where they can enjoy real space, not hovels at half a million napos per slum. But if we can't even get communications or transportation to them, let alone healthcare and education, we'll forget our pastoral dreams, like a possible new happy Arcadia . Don Quixote, for all he was, did it. Imagine us, we who are some serious Panzas!