The WHOLE Cookie Jar

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back to a time when I realized that all that glitters is definitely not gold. Despite the face it puts on regarding individual rights, when they come up against entities too big to fail, we know who the winner will be. Click over to read the original in Spanish or read the English below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

I remember it like it was yesterday. There on the news stood the prime minister of the country at the time, Jose Luis Zapatero, smirking like a five-year-old who had just stolen a cookie when he thought his mother wasn’t looking. Next to him stood the president of BBVA, Francisco Gonzalez Rodriguez. His smile was much less naïve and read something along the lines of a cartoon villain. It was the crooked look of the stereotypical bad guy from an 80s movie that had not only stolen a cookie, but had in fact stolen the deed to the entire jar. It was that kind of smile. The two leaders were giving a news conference where they both talked of their shared desire and compromise to make the workplace more flexible, more humane. A shared goal to transform the workplace into a space that would enable working parents to better conciliate their work-life balance.

My Spanish at the time was much weaker than it is now and I turned to my wife to make sure that I was understanding everything correctly, but she had no time to help. She had just come home for a quick bite to eat before having to return to her job at one of Mr. Gonzalez’s bank branches. Even though her contract officially stated that her workday ended at 3pm, she, and the rest of her colleagues who had recently joined the bank were well aware of the fact that those who ‘went the extra mile’ would be the ones that would have their contracts renewed. Those who worked for the hours that they were paid for, well Francisco’s snide grin said it all.

I remember that moment so well because it was one of my first awakenings to the fact the hypocrisy that I had experienced my whole life in North America, was also well-entrenched on this side of the Atlantic. We could delude ourselves in the belief that our ‘western’ democracies valued people’s rights above all else, but when those rights came into conflict with the interests of entities that are ‘too big to fail’, deep down inside we know who the winner will always be.

Fast forward to the small print in today’s news and I see that the banks are once again planning to make people’s working lives easier to conciliate with their families. This time by asking them to stay home permanently. Conservative estimates say that perhaps more than 10,000 jobs are set be lost in a banking industry that is still making profits. Yet suggest that the industry be reigned in and pay back the loans they received from the government after the last crisis and you’re branded a communist by those who claim to be on another ‘side’. Criticize the left for renouncing to represent the workers, you’re told you’re aiding the fascists.

And here’s where those smiles get even broader. Rather than confronting the real problems of our day to day lives during this global pandemic, we’ve somehow stepped back in time. Back to 1936 with slogans like liberty or communism or ‘o me votais a mi o vuelve el franquismo’ (vote for me or the fascists are coming) and that’s just where they want us. Squabbling over peripheral social issues instead of effecting deep systemic reform all the while they’re busy stealing the cookie jars.