It’s a mistake, because we’re not there, at least not yet. The matter has an administrative process, but the truth is that the City Council is handling it, to put it mildly, complicated. In the Ministry’s resolution something obvious was obvious: the technical reasons that the Consistory alleged were weak at best and looked too much like they had been concocted after the fact to justify a purely political decision.
That is to say, it can be argued politically that you are not interested in the cycle path, that you do not want Sagasta to be primarily pedestrian, that you do not want to make a cycle-pedestrian overhang to connect La Portalada from the south. But they will be political arguments, because the technicians (who are the ones who are used to dissolve a signed and paid contract) do not seem to be able to stand it.
If we follow this path, the Escobar City Council will end up finding itself at that point that I, erroneously, said at the beginning that we had already reached. The only thing that can save him is a political negotiation, but for that he has to accept that he is in the hands of the most uncomfortable rival and least in need of doing a favor to the PP town councils. That is, the Government of Spain and its Minister Puente.
Because Logroño is not a unique case. Fifteen town councils, now popular and formerly socialist, have made the same mistake: taking the bike lane as a political weapon for easy sale, without realizing that from a legal point of view the City Council before and the one after are the same, and that the contract that the first signed also binds the second. Decisions made hastily (for no reason, because the term is long) rarely go well.
However, at least for me, the most notable lack is technique. There are no arguments of circulation or urban well-being that justify what is done in the city. An unequivocal recipe for making mistakes.
Once we Spaniards sent Ruiz Mateos to Europe. That half-crazy guy, a successful businessman and a proven scoundrel who dressed up as Superman and insulted a minister. Some were amused enough to send him to Strasbourg and pay him a big salary. The political equivalent of Chiquilicuatre, a “jojojo” of a brother-in-law.
Now it seems that we Spaniards are about to send a certain Alvise to Europe, which is the same thing but worse. It will be the sign of the times: there are so many people for whom “the truth” is “what makes them right” that it makes some sense that we end up sending a troll who has become famous for lying in social networks for the comfort of the most ultra parish. Well, what do I know? I almost preferred Ruiz Mateos, who was more harmless. Especially because I already know about that one that it was only an anecdote, while about the one now I can only wish for it.
Hating is thrown away. It is a very easy feeling when one faces someone who is different, to whom one can blame almost everything. It is more difficult to do what original Christianity says, the one that those who have “Western civilization” in their mouths all day long remember so little: welcome the different, forgive the other, never hate.
Bombs fall on a school in Gaza. Hate feeds, germinates, spreads, reproduces. A bomb cannot turn the other cheek. Not a dead person either.
