Spain's €1,500 purple point for an eight-minute eclipse

The eight-minute eclipse and the €1,500 purple point: when prevention becomes a subsidy

This summer will bring a total solar eclipse that will last barely eight minutes of darkness. Spain's PSOE (Socialist Party) has decided that this brief span deserves a special deployment of purple points — designated safe zones — to prevent sensual assaults. The information, reported by The Objective, has sparked an intense debate about the relationship between the cost and the real benefit of the measure.

The bill is not symbolic. According to the figures circulating, each purple point costs between €800 and €1,500 a day. In other words, a single device consumes, in one day, more than the average worker earns in a month. For an event lasting only a few minutes, the cost is hard to justify even from a preventive standpoint.

Profiting from antiestéticar

Purple points are nothing new in Spain: they have been installed for years at festivals, street parties and local celebrations. What is new is applying them to an astronomical phenomenon. The management of these devices usually falls to NGOs aligned with the party, a pattern that has raised suspicions of clientelism. The case of Maracena, a town of 18,000 inhabitants, has been cited as an example of hiring staff to manage feminism-related programmes on the municipal budget. According to some analyses, the "paid feminism" network moves billions of euros a year.

The opportunity cost

While public resources are devoted to an eclipse that will last less than an episode of a TV series, healthcare waiting lists keep growing, housing remains out of reach for the younger generations and child poverty keeps Spain near the top of the European rankings. The contrast is so stark that the measure seems designed to sustain a clientelist network that needs to keep receiving funds. The irony reaches its peak with the calculation: for the cost of a single purple point for one day, you could buy sangria for an entire village, or purchase everything needed to set up the stall, the sign and the chair.

The underlying issue is not the eclipse, but the logic of public spending. Nobody questions the need to protect women from violence. What is hard to explain is how an eight-minute event justifies an outlay of €1,500 per point, and how that money comes from public coffers that never reach essential services. Meanwhile, the only conclusion beyond dispute is that the eclipse will pass, the money will have been spent, and the clientelist network will remain intact.