Neighbour. Calp’s games have already begun.

Or how names begin to move before solutions do.

Neighbour.

Not every important week makes noise.

Some pass almost in silence, as if nothing had happened. Without a major row. Without a historic vote. Without a headline splitting the town in two.

But not every calm is empty.

Sometimes, a quiet week lets you see more clearly what is moving underneath.

A name here.
A photograph there.
A party label starting to show.
A gesture of permanence.
An ambition beginning to dress itself as public service.

Calp has had an apparently quiet week.
Perhaps that is why the background became clearer.

Calp’s games have already begun.

A picture can be news.
It can also be an arena.

This week, a front page did more than lay out Calp’s political stage.
It exposed it. It placed before the resident the mosaic of those already thinking about the next division of positions: party labels, replacements, returns, ambitions, continuities, possible inheritances and small acts of survival.

And when politics is gathered into a single image, it stops looking like management.

It starts looking like competition.
No great declaration was needed.
It was enough to place them in the same arena.

Calp’s games have already begun.

Not because there are programmes.
Not because there are projects.
Not because anyone has explained what kind of town they want to build ten years from now.

They have begun because the names are moving.

Because some want to return.
Because others want to inherit.
Because some fear being left out.
Because others are looking for a party label to shelter their chance.
Because too many confuse appearing with being prepared.

That is not democracy in motion yet.
It is hunger for position.

This is not about criticising anyone for wanting to play.

Democracy needs players.

But Calp should begin to distinguish between those who want to serve and those who only want a seat. Between those who bring a project and those who bring only ambition. Between those who study the town and those who study the photograph. Between those who are preparing to govern and those who are simply preparing to be there.

Because one thing is to aspire to represent the people.
Something very different is to use the people as a ladder.

Calp has already paid for that confusion too many times.
Because governing a town is not appearing on a front page.

It is knowing what to do the next day.

Because while some begin calculating their place in 2027, the resident is still paying for 2026.

He pays for impossible housing.
He pays the bill.
He pays the tax.
He pays for services he does not always see.
He pays for waiting.
He pays for improvisation.
He pays for the lack of an ambulance when an emergency does not understand contracts.
He pays for local businesses being squeezed while they are spoken to about showcases.
He pays for summer, when the town multiplies its population, noise, traffic, risk and pressure.
He even pays for the feeling that he is always late to a game others have already started playing.

And that is the point.

The games may begin above.
But the bill always rises.

So perhaps the question should change.

Do not ask who wants to play.
We will see that soon enough.

The serious question is who knows how to govern.

Who knows how to keep a town under pressure working.
Who knows how to explain a tax.
Who knows how to sustain services.
Who knows how to think beyond a photograph.
Who knows how to listen before promising.
Who knows how to tell the truth even when it brings no votes.

Because Calp is not here for games of political survival.
It is here to demand adults in charge.

Governing should not be a reward.

Nor a revenge.
Nor an inheritance.
Nor a personal opportunity.
It should be a responsibility
A debt owed to a town that has already paid too many times for other people’s games.

Neighbour,

Calp’s games have already begun.

Perhaps it was inevitable.
Perhaps every town, as an election approaches, turns its names into pieces, its party labels into sides and its silences into strategy.

But Calp should remember something before looking back at the arena.
You do not elect the one who plays best.

You elect the one who understands that the town is not a game.

And if this time the games begin again without a project, without truth and without respect for those who pay the bill, then the resident already knows what he has to do.

Look.
Remember.

And refuse to pay for someone else’s arena again.

Once read,
it cannot be unread.

AVE CALPINVS.

Francisco Ramón Perona García