Protocol lessons for initiates
Madrid has ceased to be, for a few days, the city of madrileños-cats to become the city in which lots-of-women-on-the-corners-cry-for-me, according to the Redemptorist Gustavo Petro who appeared on the rostrum of Congress as a messiah with a biography on Wikipedia. A few days before, the cat Bolaños, mistakenly emulating Daoiz and Velarde, wanted to storm the Community of Madrid rostrum on May 2, but was blocked by a revived Agustina de Aragón, who was born in Reus, trained in protocol. Meanwhile, the English crown Carlos III and Camila, or Camila and Carlos III, both rides rides so much, with Kate Middleton dressed in the colors of Snow White. Shakespeare ventured the expression “More battles have been won with a smile than with the sword”, although, to tell the truth, in the celebration there were smiles that killed.
Well, in all these commemorations, protocol is the substance of power, because it is the power of representation and representation as power.. The power in these ceremonies is not seen or touched or heard, it is something immensely more subtle. Power hides behind signs and symbols, it disguises itself as ceremonial and protocol. His mask is the ritual. Jordi Pujol, the self-proclaimed king Ubú in Catalonia for a quarter of a century, already said that “protocol is the plastic of power”. Not surprisingly, the first etiquette manual was written for the pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, perhaps Ramses I before it became a place of leisure in Madrid's Puerta de Alcalá, 2,000 years before the birth of Tito Berni. For its part, the first code that exists as a reference for protocol standards is the Code of Hammurabi from 3,750 years ago.. And even in the Old Testament there are passages where ceremonial rules are included about the position that corresponds to each one in certain celebrations.
I doubt that in England there was a protocol incident like the one that took place in Madrid, more typical of a Valle-Inclán bizarre in the Callejón del Gato. The cat Bolaños ignored, much to his regret, that there is a structured and non-arbitrary jungle of labels, rules, protocol and ceremony that must be followed. Protocol is a hyper-coded art in which nothing is left to chance and where improvisation offends. “Only fools scoff at protocol. It simplifies life”, said Talleyrand, because he came to know very well that, outside of protocol, there is only desire, illusion and possibility. Instead, the protocol organizes, overdetermines, dramatizes. Ritual is, in short, a mode of power. From rite to myth, there is only one step. As there is also a minimal distance between myth and scam, and there are those who strive every day to practice the ignoble trade of swindler. There each one.