Los Angeles 2019, chaos and the absence of values reign. Blade Runner Rick Deckard is in the White Dragon Noodle Bar, depressed, hopeless, immersed in a pathetic, gloomy, and unhealthy environment, and in a reality where everything is likely to get worse. I was 20 years old and studying at university when that gem was released, and it still captivates me. However, very unlike that depressive atmosphere of the Bradbury Building, in Spain at that time, we Spaniards were building democracy, longing for freedom, and excited about what we were doing and why we were doing it. We knew what to reject and what to embrace, and we didn't hesitate to make decisions to improve. Thus, we transformed our socio-economic model and impressed the world. We were the writers, producers, directors, and actors of a magnificent film that spoke of utopia, and which, after 4 decades, continues to be a paradigm and object of sociological and political study. The Transition made us better, generated a positive inertia that permeated all of us, and perhaps that's why I was impacted by the film directed by Ridley Scott, because it showed a contrast to what was being experienced in any Spanish city.
Now, situated in the present, paradoxically in 2019, what we Spaniards are experiencing is a situation as dystopian as the one I saw in the Avenida de Madrid cinema in that cold February of 1983. Now, Spaniards reward a plagiarist who doesn't get off the Falcon even to go to family weddings; they accept being crushed by taxes that won't leave even inheritances alive; they endure a state intervention similar to that exercised by the authorities of Blade Runner with the invaluable technological help of the Tyrrel Corporation, I decline to make brand parallels; they tolerate that those who emulate political systems that have devastated Venezuela or stone women and hang homosexuals are in the Institutions selling progressive goodness, and they understand that those who openly propose the destruction of Spain are Senators, Deputies, Presidents of Autonomous Communities, and Mayors. But, in addition, the Spaniards of 2019 think that this dystopia is eternally sustainable, they believe that all levels of the useless and redundant Administration that Spain has, with its hundreds of thousands of politicians and officials, are viable and compatible with the artificial welfare state that, to top it off, welcomes without limits those who enter our country, even if they enter illegally and violently.
In any case, I refuse to live with the fear that Roy Batty alluded to, and I also reject that it is time to die. I prefer to see C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate someday. Spain has a solution, and we will end up getting out of the hole we are in. We will reach the wonderful place that Deckard reached with Rachael, changing dystopia for utopia and turning the latter into reality. We will do it.
By Sigfrid Soria
