Neighbour. Not everything that unites us fits on a screen.

Neighbour,

there are lives small enough to be held in your arms and still leave a shadow no house can hold.

 

Rubi was small.

So small that the world could pass beside her without understanding everything she carried inside.

 

Twelve years of companionship.

Twelve years of presence.

Twelve years walking beside me, even when the path had lost its light.

 

This week, she was gone.

 

And then I looked at a photograph.

Rubi was alone under the sun, tiny on the ground.

But behind her, an immense shadow was growing.

Perhaps some lives are like that.

 

They arrive without making noise.

They take up very little space.

 

And when they are gone, we discover that they were holding up far more than we had seen.

There are forms of companionship that ask what is wrong.

And there are others that, without understanding it, know not to leave.

Rubi belonged to the second kind.

 

She accompanied me through one of the darkest stages of my life.

She did not know what had broken.

She did not know the decisions that had to be made.

She did not understand blame, reasons or farewells.

 

But she knew how to stay.

She lay nearby.

She waited.

She walked with me.

 

And she turned her silence into a form of company that many human beings, even with words, never learn.

 

Rubi did not make speeches.

She did something harder.

 

She stayed.

 

They say wounds make a man strong.

That is not always true.

Some wounds do not strengthen.

They only teach.

 

They teach what remains when the noise disappears.

Who stays when there is nothing left to gain.

What decisions must be made even when they hurt.

And what part of oneself must never again be handed over out of fear, habit or resignation.

 

Rubi did not teach me to be invulnerable.

She taught me something more important.

When a man has been broken too many times, he stops living in fear of being broken again.

 

I have nothing left to prove.

But I still have much to defend.

 

And perhaps justice begins there.

In recognising what held us up.

And in not surrendering to fear what still deserves to be defended.

 

From Rubi, I learned to remain.

 

This week, the national team reminded us that a town can do that too.

For a few hours, Calp went out into the street under one shared joy.

 

Party labels did not matter.

Reproaches did not matter.

It did not matter who each person had voted for.

 

The spanish team team went through a rough final, absorbed the blow and did not lose its way.

 

It kept playing.

It kept believing.

 

And it won without allowing what struck it to decide what it had to become.

 

Perhaps winning is also that.

Not hitting harder.

Not shouting more.

Not becoming like those who try to knock you off your path.

Simply not losing yourself.

 

That is why I write every Monday.

Not because I think one column can bring down governments, nor because I need power to listen to me.

I write because power always relies on two silent allies:

the resident’s exhaustion

and the resignation of those who end up thinking that nothing can change.

 

When no one asks, everything seems correct.

When no one scrutinises, any narrative ends up looking like truth.

When no one makes things uncomfortable, power ends up confusing the Town Hall with its own home.

 

That is why I write.

 

Because staying silent is also a way of choosing.

And because apathy and resignation do not preserve a society.

They hand it over.

 

And now I will answer the question some keep repeating, as if every citizen who makes power uncomfortable must necessarily want office.

No.

I am not going to run for office.

 

I have not written during these two years to ask for a position, build a candidacy or negotiate with any political office.

 

I have written because the town also belongs to those who do not want to govern it, but refuse to stop keeping watch over those who do.

 

I have professional projects more important than politics.

And a life that is about to enter a new stage.

 

If one day I made a different decision, every resident would know at the same time.

 

No emissaries.

No patrons.

No permission.

 

Until then, do not confuse independence with candidacy.

Nor civic duty with ambition.

 

There are moments when continuing requires stopping.

 

This year has been hard.

Especially personally and within the family.

But it has also been the best year of my professional life, the beginning of important projects and the threshold of a new stage.

 

I am getting married.

 

And before opening that door, I need to rest, put what I have lived in order, and say goodbye to what must not cross it with me.

 

For two years, you have accompanied me every Monday.

You have been on the other side, reading, sharing, disagreeing, asking and reminding me that a word can still have meaning when it finds someone willing to receive it.

 

In September, I will return.

 

I do not know if stronger.

But I will return more settled.

Freer.

 

And knowing better what deserves to be defended.

 

The screens go dark.

The posts fade.

 

The noise soon finds another place to settle.

But a town needs something that remains.

 

It needs a memory.

A tradition.

 

A square where it can look at itself without intermediaries and remember that, before government and opposition, before followers and adversaries, before even our small wars, we are still neighbours.

 

In a few days, we will celebrate the festivities of the Virgen de las Nieves

 

Not everyone will live the tradition in the same way.

Not everyone will pronounce the same words.

 

But Calp will gather again in the same place.

And after a year speaking to each other every Monday from a screen, I prefer to say goodbye like this.

Not everything that unites us fits on a screen.

 

Some things need a square.

Until September, neighbour.

 

See you in Plaza Mayor.

 

Once read,
it cannot be unread.

 

AVE CALPINVS.

 

 

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