The title of this chronicle would certainly be interesting enough to be adopted by Agatha Christie for one of her irresistible police officers and, even without much imagination, we are already seeing the Belgian Hercule Poirot getting into the carriage enveloped in the fogs of the Sado.
For the most cinephiles this could be a magnificent title for a western directed by John Ford, “starring”, as Artur Semedo would say, by John Wayne.
It turns out that detective novels are not written here, nor are films made. We try to look at reality and understand it.
And this reality led us to one of these days waking up to the news that, in Portugal, at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st Century, a fast train “lost” or, more accurately, left a carriage behind.
Inquiries, technical opinions, expert opinions and other customary documents produced in these circumstances will certainly explain, in detail and with technical grounds, what happened.
It turns out that that carriage that was left behind has an insurmountable symbolic dimension.
It’s a cry of warning, not to say it’s a piercing cry of despair.
Today we are faced with multiple carriages that have remained, or are remaining, behind.
Public services that either do not serve citizens, are unqualified and serve poorly, or throw us into endless queues.
Significant portions of our territory that we have consciously or unconsciously abandoned to their fate and where the functions of sovereignty are no longer adequately exercised.
Social and income inequalities are becoming more pronounced because nothing structural is done to provide greater cohesion to society.
Public (non)investment continues to be the privileged instrument to avoid deficits budget, saving the situation and sacrificing the structural, with the impacts that the lost carriage symbolizes.
This feeling of abandonment, of lack of care, of everyone left to their own devices and, worse, that no one is responsible, is not good for the democratic regime.
Caring, explaining and taking responsibility is essential for democratic life and democratic life is neither a film nor a detective novel.
Lawyer and manager