Among all the moving images that the Valencia tragedy leaves behind, there is one that particularly moved me a few days ago and I don’t really know how to describe why. Marta Carazo was broadcasting live from Utiel when a group of children carrying shovels walked past her. It was already dark and there was no electricity in Utiel. Despite this, they had come from another town to unblock the sewers and facilitate the cleaning work once daylight came. There they were, working in the dark, covered up to their heads in mud. The generation that is always accused of vehement individualism.
At the opposite extreme are those who today use their privileged interlocutor to engage in demagoguery to the detriment of the pain of others. It infuriates me to see influencers spreading disinformation on their social media with inflammatory apolitical messages, a perfect breeding ground for the far right to spread outrage with their slander, a perfect breeding ground for the violence we are already seeing. The solidarity of likes exhausts me, that’s what some people are looking for by recording themselves making donations, more advertising than altruistic. And it disturbs me to see how the usual generators of hatred shamelessly spread it. They are staunch climate change and state intrusion deniers. They, who call themselves patriots, are nothing other than vile scavengers.
