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Pedro Sánchez no longer has Pablo Iglesias and Iván Redondo close to him, but rather a former deputy named Francesc Vallès, but something of both remains attached, like Rebeca, in the rooms of La Moncloa, and Vallès intuits it and applies it. According to a basic concept of politics, they are cut from the same cloth. Someone who had the opportunity to share work meetings with the three of them remembers him impressed: «in reality their heads work the same, they understood each other very quickly: they are not interested in the issues but how the issues impact people, the consequences; They said to themselves, if we do this, our support will increase in this other…”.
Yes, they speak the same language, all three believe that politics is a television set where citizens do not exist, they only see spectators; they handle the same scheme, hence that trial to articulate a Ministry of Truth, until they accepted that it was one of the few red lines that raised the eyebrows of the European authority.
The presidential guru was betting on buying off Don Vito’s directors, with money or influence (“I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse”).
The Podemite leader, on the other hand, is directly in favor of closing the newspapers: “the media is a weapon that is used to shoot and nothing more… the existence of private media is an attack on freedom of expression.” It was affirmed by someone to whom private television gave him a voice and fame when he was nobody and thanks to that he reached power and also became rich. And for his case, the utilitarian use of communication makes sense, because he moves within the distorted boundaries of the system, but the vast majority of professionals have not experienced anything similar; To begin with, it is time to work many more hours than Iglesias is capable of supporting, hopefully earn just enough, sleep little, stay up late and get up very early in the newsrooms or on the street, there is no time left to spend it in seedy bars and let loose on the students first grader with the tone of an X movie heartthrob: “I’m going to the bathroom to freshen up, I’ll wait for you there.” Iglesias has benefited from the liberality of the press, and now proclaims himself the spokesman for critical journalism, following the old totalitarian dogmas. His admired Lenin closed all the headers that he did not control because “they poison and distort the facts.” Coinciding with another enthusiastic colleague who boasted of having found “a new objectivity, giving journalists an honorable and loyal dependence on the State” (can be found in the Goebbels diaries).
How much remains in the sanchista government of all this? Well, according to what has been shown to us, quite a lot. With regard to the press, we can conclude that he manages perfectly without Redondo or Iglesias. With the peculiarity that those are two venomous cheeks and the president has a glass jaw: when he feels offended, embarrassed or simply discovered, he grinds his molars like a metal grinder. His jaw becomes transparent, he sags because of his chin. In parliamentary debates he is a bad fitter, he resists duels and provocations with difficulty. Bruxism is his Achilles heel and therefore he tries to cover himself whenever he can. Hence their conflicts with freedom of information, despite having most of the television spectrum in favor.
Sánchez suffers from a serious problem in relation to the truth that contaminates all his policies. Never before has a President of the Government made such boasts with lies and fabrication of lies, to the point that Carmen Calvo had to improvise for her leader the theory of multiple personalities, José Luis Moreno and his dolls, in such a way so that Sánchez could speak indistinctly as President of the Government, as Secretary General of the PSOE or as Macario, an individual; with the subdivisions if necessary: Pedro the Student player, Pedro Begoña’s husband or Pedro the doctoral student with an unblemished thesis; each Sánchez is different and they may well contradict each other according to the liquid gender of the times.
The immediate consequence is that Vallès, the Secretary of State for Communication, is entrusted with protecting the delicate presidential jaw. In short, that the press cannot expose the government’s systematic contradictions, the continuous change of versions, the alliance with the parties that declare themselves enemies of Spain, the likely scenario according to Bildu to release the ETA prisoners, the purchase of million antigen tests at an inflated price in addition to the cap imposed on the market, the temptation to manage European funds with opacity, the arbitrariness of these items with the risk that the waste of plan E or potential corruption due to its graceful discretion, the Plus Ultra scandal or also the excessive enjoyment of public goods such as the Falcon and official residences. Everything, in short, incompatible with the most elementary democratic rules. For that, the surveillance of a free and professional press is necessary, but the Government preferred this week to make two lists of media and discriminate access to information of the disaffected. And it’s not the first time. During the pandemic, the press stopped controlling power, its natural function; There was an obstruction, an active blockade, reinstating the previous censorship in the press conferences, manipulating the questions, decreeing the most sensitive aspects of Sanchista politics as reserved.
The president has plenty of understanding media allies who justify these inappropriate ways, by virtue of the context, polarization, parliamentary fragmentation, you know, but Ortega clarified at the time that “in life circumstances do not decide, our character decides.” Sánchez could conduct himself and govern in another way, but then he would not be Sánchez.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism