The nerve of 'Informe semanal'

Mònica Planas
2 min

Last Saturday the most biased program on TVE (Spain’s public TV network), Informe semanal (Weekly Report in English), reported on the election results in Catalonia. Of course, all the interviewees expressed enormous dissatisfaction, basically because they disapproved of what Catalans had voted for. The results did not allow them to portray Catalonia the way they wanted to or the way that would make them happy. Victoria Prego, Gonzalo Bernardos, a few professors of Constitutional law, and even media expert Román Gubern analyzed the portrait of Catalonia that emerged from the elections.

Victoria Prego, with the utmost disdain for the pro-independence bloc voters, referred to them as "those voters, from those parties, have turned their backs on reality and have cast fervent votes, and that’s called fanaticism". She then added that she didn't want to offend anyone, but it was clear, from this detail, that she had a certain desire to do so. The journalist, who for years told us all about the wonders of the political Transition in Spain, now complained that the pro-independence parties had no electoral platform: "What program will they implement? Because I haven't seen any real program." The head of the Opinion section of Madrid daily El Mundo predicted that the electoral results would not lead Catalonia anywhere because Puigdemont could not tele-govern from Brussels and it was logical that he would end up in jail. "The polls don't wash away the crimes," he said. The voice-over narration again reminded of the nine newly accused politicians, and economist Gonzalo Bernardos insisted on lamenting that Catalonia was imbued with a religious state of pro-independence conviction that was driving it to economic suicide.

One of the most painful episodes occurred when Informe semanal, the most manipulative and sectarian program which in its stories only tolerates a single point of view (that of the PP, of course), warned of how partisan the Catalan public media were. The evidence used to show this was the investigations that had been opened by the Central Electoral Board during the campaign. It was tragicomic to see Professor Román Gubern using Informe semanal microphones to call for neutrality in the Catalan public media and restating the theory that it is necessary to review them because, in essence, they were not doing their job. To put the icing on the cake, the man claimed that school history books he had seen denied Spanish national plurality and thus he endorsed the idea of indoctrination.

Informe semanal ended up lamenting that "a repetition of elections seems unlikely. Catalonia is still stuck in place." In short: TVE does not like how people voted on 21-D because they are fanatics, idiots and indoctrinated. It was clear that if you don't vote the way they want you to, democracy is of little use.

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