Why isn't he going to be a vice-president bullfighter of the Government?

“But Joaquín, how did you come to become civil governor of Huelva?” Juan Belmonte asked his former banderillero Miranda. “Degenerating, Master, Degenerating”.

The anecdote is well known, but it makes sense to evoke it now that Vox has placed a bullfighter in the position of vice president of the Generalitat. progress has been put in arms. Not because of the definition of the position, but because of the profession of Vicente Barrera. Torero, or rather toricide, in the likeness of a serial killer or a rapist.

“A bullfighter!” exclaim the editorials and columnists of the purist left. As if a bullfighter could not dedicate himself to high politics. As if it were an execrable category of society. And as if the representative of Vox meant a folk option. Even more so when the attributions of the position include the Ministry of Culture. “Bulls and culture”. What a shame.

The debate is misplaced. Because the conflict is not that Vicente Barrera is a bullfighter, but that he is a member of Vox. And in that his functions in the Generalitat obey a retrograde party whose program and obscurantism imply a deterioration of the rules of coexistence.

The problem is not the bullfighter, but precisely everything that transcends the bullfighter. I am referring to his political whims —from the PP to Vox through UPyD—, to his sympathies with Francoism and his ideological adherence to the ultra-right. It means that the degenerative process of Barrera —graduated in Law— consists of having abdicated his status as a teacher to become vice president of the Generalitat. And to propel from the Valencian easy chair the worst cave ideas.

The indiscriminate discriminatory hunt that the regime's press has undertaken against the category of bullfighter is impressive. It would be said that Spain is governed by an exquisite senatorial class. And that politics should guard against hosting extravagant professionals in its selective scruples. A bullfighter is inadmissible, in the perception of righteous columnism.

My perception is exactly the opposite. Being able to be a bullfighter, Barrera has chosen to dedicate himself to politics. He has whitewashed it, as is said now, although it is pitiful, painful, that the new vice president of the Generalitat is perceived as the nuclear or essential reference of bullfighting.

Barrera represents himself and a nauseating party, but the anti-bullfighting media campaign tries to identify him as the quintessence of bullfighting. And as proof of ideological regression. bread and bulls.

It is an obscene manipulation. And from a dissuasive approach that eludes the real debate, that is, the scandalous ease with which the PP has allowed Vox to introduce itself to the bars in the Generalitat. The surrender of Carlos Mazón is as eloquent as the connivance of Genoa 13. Feijóo himself has publicly supported the capitulation of the Valencian PP. And he has tried to cover it up this weekend with the constitutional pacts of the Vitoria and Barcelona city councils.

The Galician leader did well in neutralizing the mayoralties of Bildu and Junts for the benefit of the PNV and the PSC. It is less understood, on the other hand, that the PP has come out in a rush to denounce the scourge of gender violence while the popular agree in Valencia with the same characters who deny their existence. And that they dissipate it in the abstraction of intrafamily violence. The only dignified thing contained in the Levantine agreement is the profession of Vicente Barrera. A bullfighter who lowers himself to the category of politician.

Dedicating yourself to politics is within the reach of anyone —the cases of Sánchez, Ayuso and Revilla demonstrate this—, while dedicating yourself to bullfighting is a privilege within the reach of very few. And it is not that Vicente Barrera —his grandfather was— was a leading figure, but his personality, his temper and his faintness gave rise to tasks of merit in the nineties.

The bulls do not represent Francoism or archaism, but transgression and the avant-garde. Its scandalizing capacity comes from the aesthetic stupor and the liturgical thickness. And the cheek with which he raises all the taboos that society fears, including death, eroticism, masculinity, hierarchy, religious mystery, irrational passion, genuine heroism..

The identity manipulation of the ultra-right damages bullfighting as much as Vicente Barrera's ideology can, but the inquisitorial bias with which the left-wing intelligentsia and animalist spokesmen degrade the figure of the bullfighter to marginality and depravity is shocking, as if a bullfighter would represent the worst scale of society.

Joaquín Miranda carried out his position as civil governor of Huelva with expertise. And Luis Mazzantini went further, holding the same position in Guadalajara and Ávila. A bullfighter as enlightened as Sánchez Mejías was, patron of the Generation of '27 and unequivocal proof of the harmony in which culture and bullfighting are understood, despite the redundancy.

Degenerating, like Miranda, Madrid had a novillero mayor. And not just any mayor, but Melchor Rodríguez. A serious goring in the capital precipitated the withdrawal of the arenas, but he did well to recycle himself as the first municipal mayor. And taking to the extreme an execution that would disconnect those who think that the bulls are right-wing. Melchor Rodríguez was a unionist and anarchist. And he was known as the red angel on account of the courage with which he mediated to prevent the murder of Republican prisoners during the Civil War, being, as he was, a Prisons delegate.