Fear

On the occasion of my last trip as a senator for the islands of Lanzarote and La Graciosa and a member of the Board of the Senate of the Kingdom of Spain to Costa Rica and El Salvador, with some of the circumstances that are occurring in Spanish politics, I was able to verify how sometimes the State devours the freedoms that give meaning to democracy in the context of protecting its eternity.

He who abuses power always tries to justify himself. Few excuses are as effective as security. In its name, the autocrat can spy, detain, muzzle, and violate the rights that have cost us so much to achieve. What in normal times would be intolerable suddenly appears as an urgent measure. Almost inevitable.

It begins by identifying a real or plausible danger. It presents it as an existential threat. It personifies it. It becomes "the enemy." Those who oppose it become naive, cowardly, or complicit. At that moment, he exalts himself and crowns himself as the only option to stop the threat. As the only barrier between society and total chaos.

Complexity is the enemy of terror

It does not matter if the danger is more complex than the narrative. Complexity is the enemy of something as basic as terror. For the tyrant, a mass arrest, a military deployment, or a new prison is worth more than investigating the causes of crime, strengthening justice, or preventing criminal recruitment. Investigating requires time, institutions, and results. Acting with harshness and irrationality, on the contrary, gives an immediate image of control.

Violence seduces because it seems to resolve in days what democracy could not resolve in years. It also punishes discredited institutions. Are judges slow? It is not to respect due process, but to protect criminals. Does Parliament debate? It is obstructing progress. Does the press investigate abuses? It weakens the State and must be controlled.

If an organization defends the presumption of innocence, due process, it is on the side of criminals.

This is how the erosion of rights begins. Not necessarily with tanks in the street, but with a careful succession of apparently formal and legal decisions. Situations will seem familiar where emergencies are extended, where courts seem to respond to political trends, where laws that undermine intimacy and privacy are praised, where electoral reforms are sought that favor those who think they can hold power NOW, where the press is intimidated and media outlets are threatened with chainsaws or atomic bombs, or where those of us who do not think like those who proclaim themselves patriots, good people, and good Spaniards, are simply portrayed as the new undisputed enemies of the nation.

The meaning of democracy

It is then that democracy loses its extensive meaning and is reduced to the mere right to vote. The ruler who achieves a majority, protected by the power conferred by the people, modifies the rules of the game, begins to co-opt judges, and limits the rights of citizens in order to raise the walls that protect them from perceived threats.

What the citizen little remembers is that those walls are not erected to protect him. They are the walls of a prison built with blocks of fear. People can soon be detained without knowing the accusation. They are watched under the presumption of guilt. They can be punished for expressing an opinion.

Then, security becomes whatever the tyrant dictates. State arbitrariness does not constitute insecurity. The first to suffer it are those with fewer resources, whom they will call vagrants and delinquents. Then come the foreigners, who steal jobs from worthy national citizens. Then, the young people from stigmatized neighborhoods, who are detained for appearing suspicious of merely imagined acts. Finally, the opponents, who become necessary accomplices of the new insecurity by defending the previous ones.

Then it's you, if you dare to contradict the word or think for yourself.

So, let's remember.

Fear elevates the tyrant

Let us remember that a police state is not defined by having a disproportionate number of agents, but by suspicion taking the place of proof, detention becoming punishment, silence being interpreted as acceptance of guilt, and state security forces responding to a person before the law.

Let's remember that emergencies exist and may require exceptional measures, but exceptionality necessarily implies a limitation, a justification, and a temporality. If the characteristics previously mentioned are not given due response, the suspension of any guarantee ceases to be a tool for providing security and becomes a regime of power.

Let's remember that fear exalts the tyrant, who must necessarily make the people believe that he is irreplaceable. The alternation of power, democracy, becomes a veiled threat. But the people must remember history. They must remember that effectiveness does not erase innocent people imprisoned, thinkers shot, nor torturers turned into vigilantes.

What is the alternative, then?

The alternative is a State subject to the law

It is not passivity. It is a firm State subject to the Law. Having a professional police force, auditable statistics, prosecutors capable of investigating, independent judges, witness protection programs, just prevention policies, attention to victims, and sanctions for those who abuse their power.

And yes. It is possible that freedom without security becomes an empty promise. However, security without freedom is synonymous with servile obedience. Perhaps Goya wanted to tell us about this when he painted Saturn Devouring His Son. About how a democracy transforms into an autocracy. About how a father devours his son, democracy, to gain power. About how darkness and fear, expressed in aggressive strokes on a canvas, end up dominating the spirit of people and dragging them towards the flag of inhumanity, even if it has the red and yellow colors and they wear it on their wrists.

Perhaps it is a warning from the past. A warning that we must not ignore in the present.