Is Michelle Pfeiffer beautiful? Is Brad Pitt handsome? Perhaps, but proving such a conjecture may turn out to be impossible. Everything suggests that something similar will happen with the investigative commission that the People’s Party (PP) has just announced in the Senate—where the Prime Minister has not appeared for two years—to investigate the behavior of Spanish Radio and Television (RTVE), colloquially known as “Telepedro.” The constant bombardment of the opposition, the withholding of news harmful to the Government and the PSOE, and the sheer brazenness with which it is all done is such that—as in the case of Pfeiffer—9 out of 10 people surveyed in Spain would agree that it is shameful. Unless, of course, the survey is conducted by the CIS (Sociological Research Center).
In Spain, we are used to whichever Government is in power putting RTVE at its service (regional governments do the same with regional radio and television stations). But everything, almost always, is a matter of degree. And Pedro Sánchez’s Government has gone further, much further, than any other Government has gone before. There isn’t even a need to keep up appearances. Why bother? To the point that an RTVE official was even replaced for refusing to sign the “entertainer” sponsored by the Government. Eventually, of course, the entertainer was placed in prime time, day after day, to complete a schedule of programs devoted to praising the Government—without restraint—and denigrating the opposition. The audacity is of such caliber that the RTVE News Council has made several public complaints about it. With no result whatsoever, of course.
The result of such constant and blatant indoctrination ends up achieving, as so often happens, an effect radically opposite to the one desired. So much so that if elections were held today, the PP and Vox would obtain around 200 seats (176 being an absolute majority), according to all the polls. All of them? Not quite all. There is one survey, the state’s own, that of the CIS—headed by a high-ranking PSOE official—according to which the PSOE would win the elections today. (It would be the first time in many years).
Thus, the PP has decided to take the president of the CIS to court. As in the case of RTVE, the PP believes it can prove that Pfeiffer and Pitt are very attractive. But Sánchez knows that time is on his side, that he remains in Government, and that the day will come when the attractiveness of Hollywood stars becomes, at best, a matter of opinion. It might have been so, yes; maybe, a long time ago. But now it’s just a thing of the past… or is it? As the classic saying goes: “The dogs are barking, it means we are riding.”
