Ceuta: government lies get lost among the cannelloni

Ceuta: government lies get lost among the cannelloni

As the Ceuta crisis fuels accusations against the official narrative, a sizable part of the public conversation has decided to do something else. Instead of checking the facts about the Spanish autonomous city, online exchanges get tangled up in whether lasagna and cannelloni taste the same. The contrast between "Ceuta burning" and public indifference is no anecdote: it is the portrait of a country that has lost faith in its institutions.

Cynicism as a response to the official narrative

One strand of opinion no longer even bothers to demand explanations. It boils down to a blunt image: there is no difference between PSOE and PP, the same racket with a different façade. If the two major parties are interchangeable, any lie from the government of the day loses its scandal value. The result is that the Ceuta case becomes background noise, while the conversation drifts toward risk-free topics: food, leisure or the latest trivial controversy.

The allusion to Spengler, the theorist of the decline of the West, fits this atmosphere. Decay does not announce itself with catastrophes, but with the collective inability to tackle what matters. Arguing about pasta while a real crisis simmers on a slow flame is exactly the symptom the German historian anticipated, though he probably never imagined it would reach this level of absurdity.

A diagnosis left without an answer

The analysis stalls at one point: there is no credible proposal to reverse this spiral. The most radical talk of a "traitor state" and of taking extraparliamentary action; the most disillusioned choose to withdraw into their private lives. Between the two extremes, the Ceuta case, with its alleged or real lies, still fails to receive the attention it deserves. Distrust runs so deep that the public can no longer tell truth from fiction, and that is exactly what plays into any government's hands.