Liberalism in Portugal. With our feet on our land

“ Liberalism, The Idea That Changed the World ”, by Carlos Guimarães Pinto,

“ The Call of the Tribe ”, by Mario Vargas Llosa.

There are books that are read like someone returning home after years of absence, the furniture exactly where we left it, the smell of the closet where our mother kept the sheets still alive and smelling of washing in the back of our nostrils, and the kitchen with that late afternoon light that no longer exists, and there are books that are read like someone walking through the hospital where our older brother is hospitalized, the one who never cried, the one who didn't tell us he loved us, but stayed with us when we had a fever, now lying down with his skin like paper, his eyes turned inwards and the serum dripping slowly as if he wanted to give his memory time to finish rewinding.

Vargas Llosa’s book is just that. A corridor that smells of disinfectant. An elderly man trying to tell his children why he made the choices he did. Explaining to them that he was a communist like someone who is a believer, that he believed because he wanted to believe, because the world was unfair and he was twenty years old and read Sartre with the eyes of Peru and exile, with the silent rage of someone who had no country. And then, one day, he realized. As one realizes that his father was also lying after all. That the dream of justice was a nightmare of silence. That those who came to free the poor used the same clubs as those who had oppressed them before. The Call of the Tribe is just that: a settling of accounts with the youth. An apology that disguises itself as an essay. Each thinker invoked, Adam Smith, José Ortega y Gasset, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper, Raymond Aron, Isaiah Berlin and Jean-François Revel, is a kind of candle lit by a deceased person with whom one wants to make peace.

But all this, although beautifully written, sounds far away. Distant. Like a very well-dressed old man who tells us, in a slow voice, about the disappointments of Paris in the 70s, while holding a glass of white wine and looking out to sea with longing for a left that never existed.

Carlos Guimarães Pinto also pays tribute, also refers to, also quotes, but he doesn’t miss anything. Not Paris, not the left, not even the country. He is angry. Gentle anger. Cold anger. The kind that slowly grows in someone who has had to pay too much tax, fill out absurd forms, wait hours to get things done, listen to ministers with childish voices say that the State is everyone’s home when the house is occupied by the usual friends. His book is not an evocation. It is a restrained cry. An attempt to say “enough” with a civilized air. He writes like someone trying to save a drowning man by pulling him by the collar of his coat: firmly, without ceremony, and praying that they don’t pull him under too.

Some say that liberalism is a philosophy. Vargas Llosa shows that it is. He quotes. He elaborates. He pays homage. Liberalism, in his book, is a body of thought with a genealogy, with a living room, with family portraits on the walls. A universe inhabited by men who sat in libraries, drank tea and discussed the limits of power with the gravity of those who think for History.

But Guimarães Pinto knows that in Portugal there is no tea. There are poorly prepared espresso coffees. There are custard tarts for €1.80. There are tickets. There are queues. There is “the boss isn’t here, come back tomorrow”. And liberalism, here, is not a school of thought. It is a cry for help. A plea for relief. A hastily written note left under the door: “please let me live”. There is no Hayek, no Popper, no Aron. There are taxpayers. There are receipts. There are customers. His liberalism does not have a library, it has a tax office.

And that is the big difference. Vargas Llosa looks at liberalism as if he were looking at an old tapestry, explaining the embroidery, pointing out the seams, saying “look how beautiful this idea is”. Guimarães Pinto looks at liberalism as if he were looking at a buoy in a sea of ​​mud. There is no time for aesthetics. The country is sinking. The State eats everything. The economy does not grow. Salaries are low. Schools teach little. And everyone seems satisfied, as long as their neighbor is even worse off.

Vargas Llosa writes for posterity. Guimarães Pinto writes for Tuesday. One writes as if he were leaving a legacy. The other as if he were writing a note on the coffee table for those who come after him.

But perhaps, for that very reason, the second is more important now.

Because we live in a country where books are no longer read, where politics is a soap opera with insults in between, where political parties are employment agencies and citizens are clients with tax numbers. And in a country like this, what is needed is not erudition or bibliography. It is someone who can clearly say that this is not right. That a five-year plan is not needed to leave people alone. That freedom cannot be defended with slogans, but with limits, on politicians, on bureaucrats, on the bloated Leviathan that promises us everything and gives us nothing.

Vargas Llosa wanted to save liberal thought from irrelevance. Guimarães Pinto wanted to save Portugal from poverty. Vargas Llosa writes with longing. Guimarães Pinto writes with urgency. One invokes the dead. The other tries to prevent the living from being buried.

And so, at this time, with this country, with these governments, with these oppositions, with these television channels, with this laziness, with this resignation, with this fado, with this longing, with this bitterness, perhaps it would be better to read the second one.

At least so that we don't have to say, in a few years, that no one warned us.