Inventory of catastrophes

The regional minister of education, Esther Niubó, has provided explanations (in El País , RAC1, Ser, and Catalunya Ràdio) about the scandal surrounding the allocation of teaching positions. Alongside her commitment to solving the problem and denouncing the culprit behind the chaos (so far, a mysterious anti-establishment superhero has been suspected), the minister has taken the opportunity to emphasize the catastrophic discourse that discredits education and fuels anti-politics. I ask: when the education system has been self-destructing for decades with a hellish bureaucracy, principles that are more ideological than technical, and incompetent decisions, isn't it logical that this catastrophism spreads among the victims and the citizens? To reinforce the minister's argument, I quote a quote from H.G. Wells: "More and more, the history of humanity has become a race between education and catastrophe."

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Ways to start the week: on SER, José Luis Sastre remembers the children killed in Gaza and the survivors threatened by the Israeli army's bombing. It's a declaration of principles that participates in a humanitarian commitment that, too often, degenerates into the emphatic solidarity of a sofa-and-headscarf Palestinian tweet. In the journalistic field, fortunately, these declarations don't overshadow the effort to explain catastrophes and establish—artificial intelligence won't do that—a hierarchy of priorities. A hierarchy that contrasts with the seasonal intentions of professionals who begin summer programming with the promise of supporting listeners and viewers and the hope that there won't be too many catastrophes.

Blaming catastrophism for all our ills is too simplistic.

Current events, however, feed off of a self-referential zeal. For example, the news amplifies the echo of the interview with Alberto Núñez Feijoo in La Voz de Galicia . The PP leader boasts of never having named any official implicated in a corruption case. On RAC1, David Portabella points out that, rather than confirming his own integrity, Feijoo seems to be incriminating previous leaders of his party. The two-party system has become stuck in an alternation of corruption that, just as it favored Podemos years ago, today fuels the expectations of Vox. Blaming catastrophism and anti-politics for all our ills is an overly simplistic approach.

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Meanwhile, evidence of alleged corruption is piling up, painting a picture in which high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Finance were involved in a plot to bend the law to the interests of an economic elite. On a less tragic note, other minor catastrophes are emerging. La Vanguardia headline: "Several swimming pools closed due to the presence of excrement in the water." Warning: the excrement hasn't reached the water by supernatural accident, but by the morbid inclination of a ground-level terrorist.