Neighbour. The showcase shows. The file answers.

Neighbour,

this week, those in power returned to the showcase.

They moved closer to local businesses.
They smiled beside the stalls.
They congratulated the shops.
They spoke of support, of the fair, of the town, of revitalisation, of standing by people.

And, as always, the picture looked spotless.

But behind the photograph there was a question that did not fit inside the frame.

Why must local businesses pay more?

Because while those in power were having their picture taken with businesses at Fira Calp, local commerce was still waiting for an explanation that did not appear in any photograph: why a new burden is being imposed on them without anyone clearly explaining what concrete improvement justifies paying more.

And when a town reaches that point, the smile is no longer enough.

Only the file matters.

That is the image of the week.

One hand on the shopkeeper’s shoulder.

The other on the bill.

Let us not confuse things.

The problem is not Fira Calp.
The problem is not local business.
The problem is not that a town wants to show what it has.

Quite the opposite.

The showcase shows the effort.

But the file shows the truth.

And some have learned to govern from the photograph.

They stand in front of the business.
They stand beside the poster.
They stand at the fair.
They stand at the opening.
They stand in the video.

But when the question comes, they are no longer quite so close.

Because to take a photograph, it is enough to appear.

To explain a tax, you need a file.
To justify an increase, you need criteria.
To defend a decision, you need something more than a smile, a slogan and applause.

The showcase is useful for showing.

It is not useful for governing.

This week, behind the showcase, the papers began to appear.

The tax appeared.
Local commerce appeared.
Casa Beltrán appeared.
The Pulmón Verde appeared.

And, above all, there appeared that very local habit of turning every decision into a battle and every pending explanation into a new photograph.

Then the week stopped being just a week of fair smiles and official photographs.
It became something else.
It became a week in which Calp began to show two towns at the same time.

The town that gets photographed.
And the town that asks questions.

The town that inaugurates.
And the town that asks for reports.

The town that smiles at the stall.
And the town that looks at the bill.

The town that listens to promises.
And the town that starts asking for documents.
That is what is new.
Not that power puts itself on display.
It has always done that.

What is new is that more and more people are beginning to look at what power does not show.

There lies the method.

They believe that publishing is the same as justifying.
That announcing is the same as delivering.
That appearing in a photograph is the same as standing by people.
That repeating “we continue working” covers the absence of an explanation.

That a flag erases a beach without foot showers.
That a poster erases an unexplained tax.
That a green promise erases years of uncertainty.
That an institutional photograph erases the file.

But a town is not governed like that.

A town may look at the showcase.

But it can also ask to see the bill.

And once it starts asking for it, the narrative is no longer enough.

Because documents do not smile.

They answer.

The paradox is obscene.

They hug you at the fair.
They increase your burden through the ordinance.
They smile at you beside the stall.
They charge you through the bill.

They call you the economic engine.
They ask you to endure another increase.
They put you in the photograph.

But when you ask why you are paying more, you have to ask for the file.

That is not support for local business.

That is using it as scenery when convenient, and as a taxpayer when the accounts have to be balanced.

And the same thing is starting to happen with everything.

With the tax.
With heritage.
With the Pulmón Verde.
With every promise that is shown before it is explained.

A town that treats the people who sustain its daily life in this way does not have a communication problem.

It has a respect problem.

Because the real cost is not paid by the photograph.

It is paid by the resident.

It is paid by the shopkeeper who smiles at the fair and then goes back to the shop to look at the accounts.

It is paid by the restaurant that produces real waste, pays workers, buys stock, fills fridges and sustains part of the town’s economic life.

It is paid by the shop that opens every morning without knowing whether the month will balance.

It is paid by the self-employed person who has no press office, no video, no poster and no councillor by his side when the bill arrives.

That is the point.

The showcase lasts a few hours.

The bill comes back every year.

And when a town turns every problem into an image, the resident begins to understand something very simple: what he lacks is not propaganda.

What he lacks is respect.

Because a town does not break only when a tax goes up.

It breaks when the people who sustain it begin to feel that they exist only to pay for it.

Neighbour,

the showcase shows.
The file answers.

And a town that starts asking for documents
no longer goes back to settling for photographs.

Because behind every poster
there is a truth someone must sign.

Once read,
it cannot be unread.

AVE CALPINVS.

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