The mayor of Ripoll is right. The controversy over the hiring of Sílvia Orriols’ daughter as an interim local police officer only aims to damage her image. And she is scrutinized in a way that others are not. Of course, placing family members, friends, and acquaintances is a practice older than walking. If you have time, go to the Tarradellas Archive and you will see how, even in the 1930s, placement requests filled folders.
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Although there are many clean selection processes, around the public administration, at all levels, it is evident that procedures intended to fill positions with pre-selected candidates are whitewashed. The courts end up appointing whoever is convenient by adjusting the scores. The chosen ones have been announcing for days, “now my position will come out.” The naive present themselves as indispensable extras and then get outraged. The clever whistle, wait their turn, and wait for, sooner or later, “their position” to come out. Often it is not even necessary for the interested party or the one who wants to place them to expressly request it. Subordinates already take care of acting according to what is expected of them without anyone saying a word.
People from the north are not so clean, so noble, so cultured, or so… as Espriu believed
The mayor states that those who disagree “should challenge it.” But the system of complaints, appeals, and citizen defenders is designed because allowing complaints relieves pressure on the system. It must not be said that the affected party has no right to reply. If those challenges were taken seriously, hiring processes would drag on forever and administrations, big or small, would stop functioning with the necessary agility. The success of appeals is minimal.
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This culture of placements is not exclusive to Catalonia. And it is less Mediterranean than we usually think. People from the north are not so clean, so noble, so cultured, or so… as Salvador Espriu believed. Whatever the outcome of the Ripoll episode, it has at least one virtue: if someone can still see in the Catalan far right a regenerating element, neither in substance nor in form should one get illusions. Human nature is the same for everyone.
That said, the mayor has defended herself by putting on the urban guard’s shirt. Others wrapped themselves in Catalonia’s. And although it is presented as a new phenomenon, Aliança Catalana is deeply grafted with one of the worst traits of pujolism: victimhood. The fault is always others’. On this subject, it would be advisable to take seriously the aphorism that Oriol Junqueras uttered last week in an interview: “When you are never useful, your voters may end up voting for any useless person.” Although he said it referring to Junts, the phrase should be engraved on the frontispiece of the Parliament and on every ballot paper, like that Greek maxim, “know thyself,” inscribed in the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. Meanwhile, we can only hope that the new officer provides great service to Ripoll.
