When you don’t invite him to play marbles in the schoolyard, a boy who has won the presidential elections in the United States takes revenge by imposing tariffs, launching missiles, and similar childish acts
That Spaniards are disliked by Trump is a fake. When we set our minds to it, we are capable of exciting him.
During his first term, the great chief of the Maga tribe openly praised our efficiency. “We don’t have a country if we don’t have borders. We need a wall [on the border with Mexico]. Look at what they did in Spain. They built a wall and it worked,” he said at a rally in North Dakota.
The Spanish government – in a very European conceptual pirouette – hurried to clarify that what we have with Ceuta and Melilla is not a “wall,” which always looks bad after Berlin. What we have is a “fence,” the normal thing between neighbors who each mow their own lawn, as we are seeing today.
It is true that sometimes Trump does not understand our affection. “They are a lost cause. They are bad people. (…) They make a lot of money at our expense,” he said about the Spaniards three weeks ago as if talking about an ex-partner, giving instructions for his administration to cut all kinds of relations with Spain.
“They are not behaving well, but they will learn,” he concluded.
But nothing happened. When he suffers an anti-Spanish outburst, Trump always backs down. Someone must whisper to him that the Spanish silver dollar was the key currency to finance the Continental Congress, and that without the tons of gunpowder, muskets, uniforms, tents, and medicines that the Spaniards sent up the Mississippi, perhaps King George III’s “get them” would have crushed George Washington’s insurgents.
Twelve days after his verbal attack, the same toupee-wearing president wanted to jump and shout euphorically with those “bad people” in the same way all tribes jump and shout: around a totem, in this case the one designed by Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga in 1971: the FIFA World Cup trophy.
Trump is repelled by failure. He needs to physically and mentally merge with the winner, but with the Spaniards the Chelsea high that Trump experienced last year was not repeated, when the team that won the first Club World Cup did let him celebrate with them, in the same MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
Unlike the English, the Spanish footballers greeted him politely but did not explicitly invite him to join their euphoria. Trump desired it chemically, he couldn’t hide it, but Infantino – the chief of the FIFA tribe – kindly suggested he step aside so the winning team – the “bad people” – could enjoy their excitement without external bodies.
Read more The Supreme Court ruling allows returns from Ceuta
The orange could not be Naranjito, even though on the pantone scale they are indistinguishable: Trump is called orange man because of the orange tone of his skin, a very striking feature produced by self-tanners and makeup. A color that comes from the excess of products with compounds like dihydroxyacetone or from poorly blended powders and makeup. Powders and excesses very typical of the fascinating cabaret into which the White House has been turned.
“Trump looked angry. He exchanged tense words with Infantino. He ended up leaving the stadium through the wrong door, driving his security guards crazy,” a photographer friend of mine from the US passing through Barcelona told me: he was just a few meters away in the stadium.
What if Torres had worn the Trump cap in Barcelona and Yamal the Palestinian flag in Madrid?
The chief of the Maga tribe left angry like a schoolboy who gets mad in the playground when the other kids don’t let him play marbles. And this has unforeseen geostrategic consequences: when you deny him some marbles, children who have won presidential elections in the US take revenge with tariffs and maybe some missile.
At this critical point, Ferran Torres almost saved us as his goal at MetLife Stadium redeemed us. He appeared in the victory parade wearing a red Maga cap: Make Spain Great Again. Trump publicly thanked him. Not everyone in Spain was “bad people.”
It would have been wonderful if, in the parade for Barça’s league victory, Ferran Torres had worn the Maga cap he wore at Cibeles along Passeig de Gràcia. And if Lamine Yamal, in the parade for the national team’s World Cup victory, had waved the Palestinian flag he waved at Passeig de Gràcia along Cibeles.
A Trump cap and a Palestinian flag united in a parade in Madrid and Barcelona. Pure poetry.
Eight years after the rally in North Dakota, Spaniards have excited Trump again with the fence of Ceuta, but not precisely for its effectiveness. An electoral enthusiasm: “Remember that image. That’s how we will be in three years if the wrong side wins,” he said yesterday.
I’m beginning to suspect that the International section of a newspaper is the MRI of a madhouse.
