Among those read in summer, there is a book that has caught my attention and we have talked a lot about it among friends. CT or the Transition Culture. A review of 35 years of Spanish culture is an essay that brings together articles by authors and authors. It is not a masterpiece, it will certainly not be among the great attempts of the twenty-first century, it is quite irregular, it can be neglected at some point, even opportunistic to some author (Ignacio Echevarría), but it has a great critical force. It is, to put it briefly, a direct blow to the Spanish hegemonic culture.

The CT is a culture that emerges in Spain after Franco, and the reader realizes that it is an excellent example of an explanation as soon as it begins with the book. Of course, it is not easy to define what CT is without falling into general terms, but I believe that anyone who has followed Spanish culture in recent years may, instinctively, suspect what it may be. Just as the Haste group has had a media hegemony, CT would be largely culture. Let's say, Víctor Manuel, in the music of Ana Belén, Luis García Montero, Antonio Muñoz Molina in the literature, the culture of pact and consensus, the bipartisanship, Gregorio Milan-Barba as an intellectual, the Moncloa Treaties in the economy, as a lobby SGAE, in the film Almodovar. Among other things, of course. There's more. Amador Fernández-Savate says that CT is a culture that escapes essentially problems and debate, although it disguises itself in a possible consensus. A kind of depoliticization in which only discourses are accepted (Transition, market economy, monarchy, etc.) They are placed in a very narrow parameter, and with a neutral apolitical air. And, of course, the midwife of the fight against terrorism always ready to put an immediate end to any discussion that comes out of the line. I am sure it will become familiar to most of us.

In part, the book represents a generational cut. It presents a new generation, deeply critical of the transition and its culture, which has shown its satisfaction in the M15 movement.

The book seems to me to be a nuance, a self-critical exercise of great merit. It has a fairly entrenched criticism and, as we know, no culture can thrive more than that. However, I have not been able to avoid thinking about how a large (self)critical session would be received in us, as it is usually easier to capture the passage of the other than that of the others. In other words, how would we respond if we made a profound critique of the Basque hegemonic culture? And there's something to criticize. In general, I have the impression that since 1980 we have travelled increasingly narrow paths. He is always ready to reorient those who step out of the right Abertzale ideology line. And we, too, will be thrilled to be able to enter the runway without saying a word. But it wasn't always that way. I'm going to give you an example of an article that I just discovered. It appeared in this same journal in 1977, in the section Baietz aste mal, signed by Koldo Izagirre and Ramón Saizarbitoria. His very significant title was: “Oteiza invented the jet saying machine.” It goes without saying that Oteiza was at that time one of our highest intellectuals. I can't imagine anything like what it is today.