The Weekly Screed (#758)

Franco lives
by David Benjamin

“We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box. Spain has no foolish dreams.”
                               ― Generalissimo Francisco Franco

BARCELONA — Every time I come back to Spain, I get this vague inkling of a nation teetering perpetually and precariously on the brink of autocracy. Its last dictator, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, allegedly died in 1975. But I want to dig up the grave. I think we’ll find a casket full of bald tires, rusty soup cans, vintage Playboys and shriveled bugs.

He’s out there somewhere, alive and well. He’s biding his time for the inevitable crisis that will wring from Spain’s docile citizenry their latent hunger for one guy — in the monarchic spirit of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip the Handsome and good old Juan Carlos — who’ll tell ‘em what to do next. Suddenly, Francisco will be there, fresh and rested, saluting from a balcony.

“My fellow Spaniards, first thing we do, we kill all the Socialists.”

Cheers ring across the plaza. No more ballot boxes. No more silly talk about Catalonian secession. Just an iron fist in a chain-mail glove. And a sign of relief from a nation weary of making choices about its own destiny. Siesta time!

I could be wrong. This vague sense I have of “the Spanish national will” is based largely on crossing intersections in downtown Barcelona. You can learn a lot about a nation’s politics by how its people react to traffic signals. For example, first day here, I’m standing at the curb. Around me and across from me, two dozen natives who gaze catatonically at the “Don’t Walk” signal across a traffic-free expanse. No cars. No bikes. The street’s empty. But nobody moves.

Well, I do. I cross against the light. A few Spaniards are startled, but they say nothing. If I did this in Germany, someone would scold me.

In America, of course, nobody waits for the light to change. Red or green, if there ain’t no cars, we cross. In certain cities — Chicago, New York, Boston — a few pedestrians will cross even when fire engines are screaming toward them at 70 miles an hour. This is the Ratso Rizzo imperative: “HEY! I’m WALKIN’ heah!”

In France, walkers and drivers have fought an undeclared war for at least a century. A pedestrian in Paris will risk his children’s lives to cross against the light. A driver as far off as two blocks from that detested jaywalker will blow his horn, speed up and aim to kill. France is a free country, proud to see a “Don’t Walk” signal and give it the finger. So is America. You can feel, in the air on the curbside, that tingle of ingrained defiance that says, “HEY! Who YOU tellin’ not to walk?”

In Germany, Japan, Spain, not so much.

Here, it’s as though everyone is looking over his or her shoulder, remembering Franco. There are authorities, with rules. They will not approve — of so many things. They’ll find me. They’ll scold me. I’ll have to pay. Spain is a paradise for functionaries.

For instance, Hotlips (my wife) and I arrived in Barcelona, for the annual Mobile World Congress, by train. We were pleased that the organizers of the giant phone-fest had set up tents at the station where we could collect our geek badges — rather than shlep out to the expo hall, the Fira Barcelona, way out in the ‘burbs.

The tent was staffed by a row of eerily identical cute brunettes with ponytails, all 20 years old, all presenting a sort of glassy-eyed cyborg aspect. Hotlips and I smiled, presented passports, said we’d signed up online, asked for our badges. For a moment, our chosen cyborg was quite agreeable. She even handed me my complimentary Mobile World souvenir logo-bag.

Ah, but a senior cyborg (indistinguishable from the first — this was uncanny!) — interposed herself (we think it was a “her”). Let’s call her Inga.

“We can’t register you because you did not pay,” said Inga.

Hotlips quickly, cheerily, patiently, set the cyborg straight. “No, we’re the press. These are press badges. We don’t pay.”

“Yes,” said Inga. “That’s why we can’t register you. Because you didn’t pay.”

“But we’re not supposed to pay.”

“If you pay, here, we can register you.”

Again: “But we’re not supposed to pay.”

“Yes, that’s right,” agreed Inga. “If you haven’t paid, you can’t register here.”

“But we don’t pay. We never pay.”

“Yes. That’s why we can’t register you. You haven’t paid. If you haven’t paid, you can’t register.”

“Even if we don’t have to pay?” I asked.

“That’s right.” Inga smiled at my perspicacity. “You have to go to the Fira.”

“We’re entitled to our badges?”

“Yes.”

“But we can’t get our badges?”

“Because you didn’t pay.”

“But we don’t have to pay.”

“Yes. That’s why you can’t get your badges.”

We looked at Inga. Inga looked at us. She was cool, implacable, entirely correct in every respect. She was in charge. We were mere subjects. We would obey. We would go to the Fira.

“OK then, thanks,” I said, “You’ve been very helpful. By the way, have you ever read Catch-22?”

As we turned to leave, Inga snapped her fingers. “Excuse me,” she said.

We turned. Now what?

“The bag,” she said. “You can’t take the bag.”

Way out at the Fira, we wasted a half-hour with three more suspicious functionaries. But I got my badge — which I didn’t really want because it meant I would have to work the convention rather than explore Barcelona.

Next day at the Fira, despite our badges, we had to struggle past a squadron of SWAT police with machine-guns, through two ID checks and a half-dozen fences, turnstiles, barriers and Don’t-Walk cyborgs in Da-Glo vests with signs that read, mysteriously, “Cross the Bridge.” This was all meant to impress us with the rigor and vigilance of Mobile World’s security measures.

I’d gotten a new souvenir bag, by the way. Then someone handed me another, and a third bag after that. I was bagged to the eyeballs.

I looked around, at a countless throng of cell-phone geeks, each as bag-laden as me, with briefcases, attaché cases, pocketbooks, backpacks, rucksacks, camera bags, shoulder bags, duffels, roller bags, even the odd golfbag and, of course, several thousand Mobile World logo-bags — each bag zipped, opaque and confidential to its possessor. I said: “Security?”

I thought, what object is singularly ideal for your typical mass murderer to conceal and carry a brick of C-4, with blasting cap and a few kilos of nails, ball bearings, broken glass and razor blades, and easy to leave — unobtrusive and overlooked by the minions of security — in the middle of a milling throng of countless oblivious innocents, so that, retreating to a safe vantage point, he can detonate this deadly surprise with an electric impulse from, yeah, a mobile phone?

A bag.