Free-D

So that’s that then, Zapatero stays in office with a less convincing majority than previously believed possible. Meanwhile smaller parties, such as the IU  managed just 6.43% of the Salamancan vote. They complain that they’ve been squeezed out by the polarizing effects of the electoral campaigning. This is, no doubt, partly aggravated by the press: on the day following the election virtually the only mention of “minority” groups ran for a quarter of a sheet on page 15 of the Gaceta. You could ask “why should they enjoy greater representation?” Well, anyone  seriously considering how to vote understands that minority parties represent a far greater number of people’s views than the media would have us believe. As such you might think they also represent a significantly more important aspect of Spanish life than does, for example, Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, the Elvis be-wigged, toy guitar toting idiot currently attempting to “revitalize” Spain’s Eurovision efforts . One couldn’t want for a clearer picture of the imbecility with which European culture is infused than the full page spread given this performer by a local newspaper  a day after the election. Whether or not you believe that our priorities are created or mediated by the press, magazines and television, you must surely agree that the diminishing cerebral cell count at a pan European level is a depressing picture. Last week I bemoaned the inanity of political campaigning, but we’re surrounded by a preponderance of superficiality at every level. Don’t you ever get the sense that the real issues aren’t even making the papers, that somehow something is fundamentally wrong? That “something” is, I think, the continual distraction which goes on around us, like a conjurors flurry of hands; usually it means a new car, a better mobile phone, a beauty product – anything to take our eye off the ball.

Admittedly it’s an odd association, but while thinking of that 6.43% of those minority groups, I was drawn by the remembrance, from my Sunday school days, of the “still small voice” of the spirit. We’re drowned in mindless pop music (accompanied by the gyrating of young ladies’ rears); we’re force fed material envy and the explicit belief that you are what you have – all at top volume and pretty much without cessation. As we near holy week, perhaps it’s a good time to consider the voices we aren’t hearing; that tiny  slither of the pie chart in society, in our families - and in ourselves , that are asking questions even the Eurovision song contest can’t answer.