Who is taking care of the citizens of Madrid?

Revolutions that have changed people's lives have always been made on the basis of simple slogans. Lenin and his Bolshevik group dethroned Tsarism with three words: BREAD, PEACE and LAND. Russians were starving, dying by the thousands in a war that was not theirs, and were mere merchandise for the feudal rich. LAND and FREEDOM were enough to raise up the Mexican people, who regained popular sovereignty and succeeded in making Mexico the most prosperous country in Latin America at the time. FREEDOM, EQUALITY and FRATERNITY were enough to put an end to a despotic monarchy in France, to make way for millions of women and young people, and to enable the wretched to set an example to the civilised world. LAND, LITERACY and PEOPLE'S POWER made it possible for Mao to mobilise millions of people and create the basis for the modernisation of the most populous country on the planet. Levers changing the world are not ideological debates, nor endless polemics of good guys and bad guys; they are the goals uniting millions.

Now to business. What is going on in Madrid ahead of the 4 May elections looks like an embarrassing farce, in which the protagonists indulge in navel-gazing and are busy disqualifying each other. Tyrians and Trojans bring up whether you support dictators (whether Franco or Hugo Chávez), whether you have left people to die in hospitals or nursing homes (Ayuso as president, or Iglesias as head of the government), whether you are dedicated to provoking people or disrupting public events. In a word, the one who shouts the loudest, the better.

In the current Madrid scene, little or almost nothing has been heard about what the people of Madrid want, what worries them, what they aspire to. Given the catastrophe the country is experiencing as a result of the pandemic, there are three words that would mobilise the people of Madrid: BREAD, WORK and HOUSING. The food basket has been reduced to the limits of hunger; hundreds of thousands of citizens have lost jobs, businesses and job opportunities; decent housing, or simply a place where hundreds of thousands of young people can emancipate themselves from their families, is scarce or non-existent.

Suspending the debates in the public media is a political blunder, liable to be taken to court. The State, through its radio and television stations, has the obligation to invite politicians to tell the people of Madrid how they are going to meet these needs: Bread, Work and Housing. That is why we pay our taxes. And if any party or candidate does not want to participate, that's up to them. Millions of Madrileños cannot be penalised for cockfighting in the corral. The vast majority of the people who live in the Community of Madrid care very little about whether the bullets fired by Iglesias and Marlaska were real or fake, whether the other parties declare their solidarity with the invisible ex-president of the Spanish Government, or whether they ask him to leave and stop the bullshit.  What citizens are concerned about, and why they are inclined to vote on 4-M, is what their future, their children's future or that of their elders will be like. It is true that there will be 20% or 25% of Madrileños who are unconditional supporters of their parties, who will vote for them, even if the rain falls. But three quarters of the citizens are waiting to see what their future will be.  They have every right to force the parties to explain themselves.