"LO VERDADERO Y LO VEROSÍMIL"; or, QUÉ HA PASADO CON EL COMUNISMO: CODA

the curbside parking spaces are too large to think that drivers should need help managing their vehicles into any one of them (especially drivers accustomed to driving in central seville), but the aparcadores are busy directing the drivers into the spaces nonetheless, and they collect a few coins in finders' fees for their halfhearted gestures of guidance as the drivers walk away from those spaces that they could have easily found themselves, understanding that the situation with the aparcadores is one from which it's better just to pay and walk away. later, a pile of coins will hold up the closing time line at the grocery store as a cashier totals the change to see how many liter bottles of beer the pile will buy. it's interesting to wonder about the same as i'm on my way to the import bottle shop. but there isn't space for street parking on that stretch of jesús del gran poder. one twelve ounce bottle of american ipa costs about the same as six liters of the grocery store's off brand lager. i need two for the picnic.

we're walking on the east bank of the river looking for a spot to lay the blanket, and i ask what's taking the new public library so long to open as we pass it. she says there's a problem with the name. felipe gonzález márquez is sevillano, but the spanish president was also the secretary general of the socialist party, and the psoe no longer controls city hall. it's a curious coincidence to see gonzález a few hours later at the contemporary art center, speaking with the king seated next to him in a video taken at the universal exhibition of ninety-two for which the city developed the isla de cartuja. before the exhibition site was developed, cartuja was only the monastery, which was then a ceramic factory and is now the contemporary art center. most of the exhibition site remains a modern ruin, but the video of gonzález is not being projected in the lara almarcegui exhibit on urban wild spaces but in the larger, general exhibit on contemporary urbanism. who knows what would have happened after franco if juan carlos hadn't supported the transition to democracy (which included the legalization of the communist party in 1977), but it also isn't difficult to imagine that he and gonzález might have had different ideas on how to manage the fears of the people as they sat next to each other on that stage in cartuja on that day in nineteen ninety-two.

it's too dark to see much on the walk back, but the walls on the east side of the east bank esplanade are covered in street art. some of it was even sponsored by the city. the police that guard the closed gates around the felipe gonzález márquez library by night don't hassle the taggers by day, even now after the keys to the city have been passed. the tags on the buildings in the city center are much cruder. they're graffiti. if things hadn't gotten so difficult in the rest of the world, maybe things wouldn't have gotten so hard for zapatero. the warning that socialism lies isn't far down the street from the reproof that seville was a slave to the psoe (and somewhere along the way anarchism won as well). i would like maybe to be thinking something insightful about, say, the aparcadores when she asks me about the primaries in the united states, but i'm focused on something else. there's another piece of graffiti, and even if it has nothing to do with the others and it's not at all reflective of any sevillian or spanish sentiment in general (which, most likely, it's not), it's horribly unamerican. maybe it was gonzález, and maybe that's why they won't let his library open. and he was speaking so optimistically in that video. i don't want to call her attention to it although i do think it might be funny. yes. i do. "it's my fault."