Every Time I Return to Argentina — A Crisis

I am Spanish and Argentine, involuntarily, emotionally, and professionally exiled — and a weekly columnist for a Spanish newspaper called Vozpópuli. I write every Thursday analysing European politics and its surroundings. I do not write for Argentines; that would make no sense. They’ve already seen the movie and read the book.

Because what is happening in Spain — with Pedro Sánchez, his kirchnerist process, his methods and his tricks — is pure déjà vu to an Argentine. It is like seeing the same scene again, the one where you know they will kill the father of the girl. Eternal spoiler.

That’s why today, writing from Buenos Aires, where I am visiting (out of nostalgia, exile, longing), what strikes me most is simply another crisis — one more. One more of those that in Europe seem exceptional and here in Argentina are barely part of the landscape.

The Argentine crisis is not an episode. It is a state. It is not a pothole. It is the path. There are technical crises, we know. There are mortal crises with outcomes. Ours is not that. The Argentine crisis, in etymological terms, is our way of existing. We live in crisis. We inhabit it. We decorate it. We drink mate.

I notice it as soon as I land. The taxi driver taking me from Ezeiza asks where I come from. I tell him I live in Madrid. He goes quiet. Then he fires back, with genuine porteño accuracy: “Ah, so over there the chaos comes from the socialists, the friends of Maduro, but the dollar is stable, right?” It is a perfect summary of two countries. The dollar in Spain doesn’t exist, but my answer is yes — it is stable. I know it feels better for him to hear that, because any Argentine admires you if you live somewhere where the dollar just sits still.

For example: what matters most to an Argentine in India might not be the Taj Mahal so much as the Indian rupee’s exchange rate — if such a thing even existed. There is a television interruption before Holy Week, a flag waves across screens announcing a national broadcast, the president will speak. It is a little frightening and triggers bitter memories.

The lifting of the dollar controls is the good news. Every media outlet talks about it. Radios, which in Buenos Aires are still listened to with devotion, seem like economic prayer chains. Every journalist has his own “dollar” in mind: the official, the blue, the MEP, the liquidity, another dollar that on Monday no longer exists, and so on. The Argentine economy is Babel.

Meanwhile, I witness a highly charged public conversation. Politics has returned to the dinner table, the taxi, the supermarket line. The proximity of elections helps. The absurd decisions taken prematurely regarding those elections too. And what is truly Argentine is that this time the government did not trap us in this mess. We ourselves marched toward it — arrayed, disciplined, nationally organized for disaster.

Sometimes I wonder: maybe I don’t return to the crisis. Maybe I bring it with me. I come to Buenos Aires and the critical process activates. General strikes. Crowded streets. What will happen with the dollar? The dollar in Argentina is God. It is our invisible force. Now that we have a Pope, the matter of an official God is somewhat covered. What we do not control is the green dollar, the expensive one. And that one rules.

So here I am again, and I think: every time I return, a crisis. Maybe the problem is not the crisis. Maybe the problem is me. Or worse: maybe the problem is that here the crisis never leaves. It just waits for us to come back.