Otto von Bismark never said that Spain was the strongest country in the world, because the Spanish have been trying to destroy it for centuries and have never succeeded.. But I am quite convinced that he could have thought of it and that, if he had lived a little longer, he would have left a similar quote about Belgium.

Last Friday the National Holiday was celebrated, which commemorates the oath by which the first Belgian king, the foreigner Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, undertook to remain faithful to the Constitution. It was in 1831, less than a year after that singular revolution that allowed the definitive separation of the Netherlands.. It was the time of great dreams after the fall of the Old Regime, and a group of patriots were moved during a performance at the La Monnaie theater of La muta de Portici, a play inspired by the 1647 revolt in Naples against the Spanish viceroyalty.. The fact is that it got out of hand and suddenly they had a country and a brown.

They say in Brussels slang that this happened in stoemeling (s), which amounts to something like furtively. Today, the expression is used throughout the nation (sic) to indicate something done in an underhanded, cunning way.. The other day comrade Albisu recounted that after leading the independence movement with the French flag, the incipient founding fathers soon discovered that, in order to found a State, they needed, among other things, iconography. They opted for the colors of the Brabanzona revolution of 1787-1790, origin of the ephemeral United States of Belgium, and the Constitution included that the ensign would have horizontal stripes of “red, yellow and black”, in that order.. The fact is that it was reminiscent of the Dutch one, so a decree was improvised to change to a vertical arrangement, and then another, from lost to the river, for order. But no one considered it necessary to amend the Magna Carta and that is why they are, mother of all belgitudes, the only country that breaks the law in its most representative symbol. geniuses.

The fact is that now that the 200th anniversary is approaching, the bets say that everything can burst. The polls indicate that the leading political force is the far-right of the Vlaams Belang, a party of fascist origins (its embryo was outlawed) and on which a sanitary cordon weighed, but which has managed to transform the immigration issue into electoral fuel. Flemish nationalists have always wanted independence and 15 years ago it was a daily debate, hence the expression of Jacobo de Regoyos: Belgistan, a disintegration in slow motion. However, the traditional conservative right, the N-VA, chose to be pragmatic, achieving autonomy, powers and even forming part of federal governments with French-speaking parties.. Resigning himself to not leading it despite being the biggest. That put the question to sleep, but the ultras want to wake it up.

“Belgium is a forced marriage,” frontman Tom Van Grieken told Politico the other day. “If a part of them wants a divorce, we will discuss it as adults to arrive at an orderly separation. If they do not want to sit at the table, we will do it unilaterally,” he warned. No one quite understood how the country came to be, and its recipe for success is that not too many have taken it very seriously since then. What better finishing touch than a disintegration in stoemeling and without anyone noticing. Or gave it too much importance.