Neighbour. Power denounces power.

Neighbour,

there are moments when a town does not break because of a building project.
Not because of a council meeting.
Not even because of a scandal.

It breaks because of something subtler. Dirtier. Older.

It breaks when a vote stops being a mandate
and starts behaving like a commodity.

When what was supposed to serve the people
starts serving the manoeuvre.

When a council seat, born from a ballot,
begins to move as if it had a market value.

And that is where Calp has entered this week.

Not just into a crisis of government.
Not only into a crisis of numbers.
But into something worse:
a crisis of meaning.

Because one thing is to disagree.
Another is to walk away.
And something very different — and far more serious —
is to walk away without returning what you no longer represent.

That is where the uncomfortable question begins.

Not whether someone had the right to be angry.
Not whether there were tensions inside government.
Not whether there was poor coordination, fatigue or fracture.

All of that can happen.
All of that may even be true.

The question is another one.

Simpler. Harder. More dangerous.

Who does a seat belong to?

The person who occupies it?

This term has already brought serious decisions.
Casa Beltrán.
The rubbish tax.
The broader direction of the government.

So we are not dealing with someone newly shocked by events.

We are dealing with someone who was inside.
Who voted from inside.
Who upheld it from inside.
And who now denounces from outside what she helped sustain from inside.

People understand that immediately.

You do not need political theory to understand it.
Experience is enough.

A person may argue.
A person may grow tired.
A person may leave.

What is not clean
is getting up from the table while taking the chair with you.

And that is exactly what hurts here.

Not only that a majority breaks.
Not only that the government is weakened.
Not only that the chamber falls into a tie.

What hurts is the feeling that the seat now matters more
than the commitment under which it was won.

And when that happens, the citizen stops seeing representation.

They start seeing transaction.

If someone truly believes they can no longer stand behind the project under which they were elected, there is a clean exit: to leave entirely.

Not to keep the seat,
break the institutional balance of the town,
and then present oneself as the critical conscience of the very thing one helped vote through.

Because then we are no longer talking about courage.

We are talking about an old and familiar form of power: the kind that turns borrowed legitimacy into a personal position.
And that, neighbour, always comes at a price.
It comes at a price because the government falls into a minority.
It comes at a price because the term becomes poisoned.
It comes at a price because every agreement starts to smell of calculation.
It comes at a price because the final year stops being time for governing
and becomes time for testing, pressure, waiting and positioning.

And while some reposition themselves,
the people are still left with the rubbish.
With the works.
With the streets.
With the access roads.
With the same old problems.

That is the obscenity.

The citizen goes on living the real,
while politics starts playing a different game.

Not to solve.
Not to respond.
Not to sustain.

But to position itself.

That is why this is not only about one councillor.

It is about a deeper disease.

The ease with which some elected officials forget
that a seat was not given to them so they could feel decisive,
but so they could answer for a mandate they received.

Because in a democracy, a seat should not be a prize.
Nor a shelter.
Nor a private key.
Nor a token used to rearrange the board whenever it suits someone.

It should be a debt owed to the vote that made it possible.

And when that debt is no longer honoured,
local politics enters an ugly place:

the place where we no longer know
whether someone is speaking in the name of the people
or in the name of the advantage they have discovered in their own rupture.

That is the danger.
Not that someone leaves.
But that, on leaving, they do not leave entirely.

Because then the message received by the citizen is devastating:
your vote helps someone get there,
but not necessarily remain faithful to what they arrived with.

Neighbour,

some departures expose a government.
Others expose the person who leaves.

This one does not expose a mere difference of judgement.

It exposes a way of holding on to what one no longer represents.

And that is the line that should never be crossed:
if you no longer believe in the project under which you obtained the seat,
you do not keep the seat in order to decide over everyone else.

You leave.

Because if you do not leave,
you are no longer defending a conviction.

You are exploiting a position.

And when politics starts exploiting positions instead of honouring mandates,
the neighbour stops being represented.

They begin to be trapped.

Not by a government.
Not by an opposition.
But by a form of power that has forgotten an elementary rule:
the seat is not booty.

And when the seat becomes booty,
local democracy stops being wounded.

It begins to rot.

Once read,
it cannot be unread.

Until next Monday, Legion.
AVE CALPINVS.

Francisco Ramón Perona García (@fran_rpg)
Jurist. Citizen. Uncomfortable.