I was born one day in the summer of 1998 at the Lluís Alcanyís hospital in Xàtiva. At that time, Eduardo Zaplana had been president of the Generalitat Valenciana for just three years, after prevailing over a PSPV-PSOE destroyed and unable to rise above its own ruins. My first years of life were peaceful, in a depoliticized and happy society where brick and mortar and tourism distributed (although very unequally) wealth, apartments on the beach and Audis A3, a clear symbol of status and economic prosperity at the time.
In those years, as well as at the dawn of the 20th century, in the midst of the Restoration—which Blasco Ibáñez masterfully portrays in his novel Between Orange Trees—we Valencians knew well who to vote for. The kids of my generation, the Babalà generation, grew up thinking that the absolute majorities of the PP were an indigenous species. In short, they were born and grew from trees, like oranges or olives that are grown in the fields that we have in the long Valencian geography, which extends from the Sénia river to the Segura. During those years we were, more than ever, the happy Levante. And, what I have always asked myself: How can you compete electorally against happiness?
Ours was a land where babies were born with the image of Zaplana inaugurating crazy things in the background on Channel 9, in the news that came right after the drawings of Doraemon, the cosmic cat. With an opposition in ruins, too many people looking the other way and wads of cash everywhere, we grew up in a post-political society before the era of post-political societies. A society where emotions occupied the center of political life, years before the arrival of figures like Obama or Donald Trump, with their Yes, we can and his Make America Great Again. But, as Lord Acton said, if power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Silvio Berlusconi, Zaplana’s contemporary, unknowingly defined Zaplanism, and perfectly described both characters when he said that “if by taking care of everyone’s interests I also take care of my own, it cannot be said that there is conflict of interest.” Be that as it may, I have always seen Zaplana as a kind of Valencian Santa Claus, a modern saint who helped you get what you wanted (a job, the car you had dreamed of, access to spaces in certain media outlets). …And even some good new releases, who knows). This type of charismatic leadership, however, could not be understood without the factor of fear, as De Niro taught us in A story from the Bronx.
If my generation has value in anything, it is that we were protagonists in the repoliticization that Valencian society experienced, according to the Valencian Spring, the 15M, the strong emotional component that music represented in Valencia and the rest of the democratizing movements. A drive that was essential to generate the electoral breeding ground that favored the conditions for an eight-year period of progressive governments, and which had its protagonists in Mónica Oltra, Manolo Mata, Ximo Puig and Joan Ribó. If everything progresses as planned, as Quico Arabí recalled, Eduardo Zaplana will enter the Picassent prison, inaugurated the same year that Zaplana himself became mayor of Benidorm (1991). Now, with the chips on the table, a new game of dominoes begins. Will Mazón be able to win or will the left return to come back and leave this stage as a parenthesis? Bold fortune iuvat.
