The candidate of the ‘Kamasutra’ and the elderly

Juan José García Gil, head of the list of the formation 3 Edad en Acción, in Burgos.

The question that should be asked in the case of Juan José García Gil, head of the list of the formation 3 Edad en Acción for mayor of Burgos, is “What is a boy like you doing in a candidacy like this?” The least that can be said is that his service record is extensive: philologist, founder of language academies, successful small businessman, everlasting agitator of Burgos cultural life, founder and director of museums such as the Fadrique de Basel Book Museum, the Museo del Cid and the Voynich Museum, friend of Umberto Eco and prestigious publisher together with his partner and friend Pablo Molinero at the helm of Siloé Arte y Bibliofilia. It is the most awarded historical book facsimiles publisher in Spain, with a long score of awards from the Ministry of Culture behind it, the last two received last week for the works Views of cities in Spain, by Nicolás Chapuy, and De Monstris: De monstrorum causis, natura et fiferentiis, by Fortunio Liceti. Other of his successful titles, always in limited editions and very popular among collectors in the field, are the Voynich Manuscript, the Cartularios de Valpuesta, the Libro de Horas de Luis de Laval, the Beatus of Geneva and the Emilianense, and all types of medieval codices, bestiaries and botanical treatises that García Gil and his team present and sell at major international book fairs. The Persian Kamasutra is his latest editorial hit.

But what has the editor of the Kamasutra lost in a local candidacy of a party that is not really a party, which had no headquarters until the candidate himself gave up a premises of his own and whose slogan for the elections on Sunday 28 Is fed up like you and open to your ideas?

Explanation of the interested party in front of some heavenly suckling lamb chops in the popular Pancho de Burgos bar: “I realized that in this country, if you are not in the gears and you protest for something, they don’t pay any attention to you, it’s as if you did not exist Here I have protested many things because I have seen many injustices, and what have they done with me? cross me out And they do the same with many people. And what they get is a lot of bitter people. So, the conclusion is that the citizenry needs someone in power capable of turning those who control everything red. Our main objective is to make visible the elderly, who are ignored and despised”.

Arguing over ideology ends up embittering people and causing them a feeling of wasted time

According to this perennial Pepito Grillo of Burgos life and a popular and controversial character in the city (he has led protests both against the exhibitions organized by the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the Las Edades del Hombre cycle and against the project of new doors for the Cathedral of Burgos by the artist Antonio López), the time has come to combat the ghost of ageism and give authentic visibility to the elderly. And to do it from a formation without ideology because, argues Juan José García: “We have clearly verified that arguing over ideology makes people bitter and causes them a great feeling of wasting time; people are so drowned in basic needs that when they see that an entire afternoon in Parliament is dedicated to ‘and you more’ and various fights for alleged ideological criteria, well they despair”. He is perfectly clear: “The problem today in Spain is that people are no longer voting for who manages better, but who promises more, and that as a society is a drama.”

The best compliment that the candidate García —the candidate Juanjo, as the electoral posters say— and his companions on the electoral list receive these days through the streets and squares of Burgos is the following: “I did not plan to vote, but now I will vote.” The aspiration of 3 Edad en Acción Burgos is to become the key to the municipal government of the city. “PSOE or PP? We don’t have red lines, but the truth is that right now we don’t feel identified with either of them, with some because they haven’t done anything they promised and with the others because we already know what they did before, ”he explains.

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But that aspiration to become a hypothetical key to governance would mean the achievement of at least two councilors. Arduous mission, taking into account that to achieve one in the Burgos consistory, no less than 4,500 votes are required for an electoral roll of some 134,000 voters. An arduous mission, taking into account that the electoral law grants parties such as PSOE -which currently holds the mayoralty of Burgos, in the person of Daniel de la Rosa- and PP 400 points for pasting electoral posters… and seven to 3 Age in Action Burgos. “It is the law, of course… but is it democratic? I think that it is not very democratic, of course”, laments García, who concludes with the following reflection, certainly as debatable as it is worth thinking about: “We are convinced democrats… but how dictatorial can democracy be for small political formations!

How dictatorial democracy can be for small political formations!

As fed up as you… “Well yes, because we see that society is fed up, fed up above all by the economy. A 15-M is brewing again. That young people see how their salary does not give them a living is the biggest problem in this society. A brutal inequality has been generated, and often the gaps between salaries in the same company do not correspond to gaps in the type or quality of work that is performed”. One of the slogans of 3 Edad en acción Burgos is Zero unemployment without anyone leaving. “We must remember that we are in an emptied Spain”, points out the candidate, “They tell us: unemployment is low. Yes, but it is that the youth population, too, because they go to Madrid or go to the coast. This is a serious problem that we have here, and that will only be fixed with more industrial projection”.

3 Edad en Acción Burgos wants, among other things: to abolish the municipal capital gains tax, to turn Burgos into a small mecca for Spanish studies for foreigners (“the Spanish Cambridge”, the candidate Juanjo dreams of), into a national benchmark in the use of alternative energy sources and an example of a leisure city for all three ages; reinforce the training and care of the elderly in the real use of digital tools, launch a so-called Comprehensive Plan against Loneliness and put Burgos on the starting grid to obtain the European Cultural Capital of 2031. Vast mission.

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