Free-D

Before we saw the sun this week, a gloom seemed to hang over the region, what with heavy rainfall bringing not only pollution problems but washing away a whole crop of sunflower seeds as well (valued at over 180,000 euros).

Add to this those pesky topillos gnawing away at peoples´ potatoes and the slightly more concerning disappearance of a couple of tablets of uranium – and what you’ve got is a fortnight which for many hasn’t been a lot of fun. But, when things seemed about as low as they could get, good old Salamanca council slapped two giant orange domes in the plaza. Just to cheer us up no doubt.

I’m sorry to hark back to a theme so recently touched upon but there’s just no need for all this talk of “guidelines” and a lengthy administrative process regarding the use of the plaza. All that’s needed is a little common sense.

It should be quite obvious that the pair of giant “huevos fritos” sitting, sunny-side-up in the plaza should have been precluded on aesthetic grounds alone.

It may seem trifling in a fortnight which has brought so much difficulty with it (and for some, misery) but it’s often the little things that make life bearable - or otherwise. (If you could have called that inflatable anathema “little”).

There was something about the insolent sunniness of those domes which irked one when remembering the destroyed crop and the lost, unholy fragments of uranium.

What’s hard to understand is why everything has to be reduced to a sort of “telly tubby” aesthetic. There’s nothing snobby about expecting a certain level of aesthetic standards: if it were such a bad thing, nobody would mind if we just pulled down the plaza and replaced it with a bouncy castle.

It appears from the history of volte-face which Julian Lanzarote has executed over this issue that he is being blown hither and thither by public opinion.

The problem with this is that the common view is mediated through channels which tend to polarize. What you end up with is a “knee jerk” reaction from both liberal and conservative view points.

You might as well have a conversation with your typical “man in a pub” – famous for such enlightening broadcasts as, “I’m not a racist but…”, “It’s political correctness gone mad”, and my personal favourite, “I agree with Prince Charles.” …… all apparently the attitude of the “common” man – and all totally insane.

Obviously, everyone knows best how to run the show, but we only understand a fraction of the difficulties that politicians face, not least that their position definitively denies them the use of the afore mentioned common sense. So, to execute a little u-turn of my own, perhaps we should take it a bit easier on Lanzarote over this issue – besides when it comes to the gravity of giant eggs, I tend to think that lost uranium is a little heavier.