Read in Catalan

After sixteen years as the editor of a newspaper, fourteen at La Vanguardia and two at El Nacional, many of you will understand that what I least enjoy is to analyse the work of an editor of other media. It shouldn't be us, those responsible for the media, who judge our competition, but the readers. Even more so now, in the digital world, when there are so many options to choose what one wants to read, and not be held hostage to the printed papers of bygone days, that are lately resorting to the biggest printed outrage ever remembered against truth and against democracy, until they finally become the living dead, worth nothing and serving no purpose.

This introduction was necessary before I can express my stupefaction for how a fabricated document can be concocted from a verbal communication, placed on the front page of El Periódico, and presented as an exclusive. At first, from the CIA, and then later from another American security agency. It is true that the tension and speed of news can sometimes result in errors being committed. But this is not the case, since the first advance of the piece of news already provoked a great racket the same afternoon of the terrible attacks in La Rambla of Barcelona on 17th August. Here the matter seemed to remain, but the way it has since resurfaced, far from reinforcing the veracity of the information, resembles very much other excessive reports that we have lived lately in Catalonia too many times, although not with 16 dead such as produced by the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The campaign to discredit the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police) pursues two things, still more reprehensible. In the first place, to transfer to the citizens that more could have been done to prevent the attacks and that the Catalan police failed in the analysis of information that fell to them from Spanish security corps and also from the United States. Secondly, to break in any way possible an unfamiliar situation in Catalonia, which is the current sympathy between the Mossos agents and the citizenship. The clearest example of this second point was the result of the demonstration last Saturday, with crowds of citizens handing out red and yellow roses to the Mossos agents, or placing them on their vehicles. That this attack against the Catalan police is being carried out whilst the country continues to be in a state of anti-terrorist alert of level four out of five, and in the middle of a general recognition of the Mossos action, is not only shocking, but for it to also have no basis is irresponsible.

From here to 1st October, everyone agrees that we'll be attending to exceptional political situations and there will be the publication of news that has little or nothing to do with the reality, although it fulfills its function: it ends up being discussed on the radio, on television, in the newspapers, with disparaging remarks about opponents and rivals along the way. Experience shows that it already promises to be a classic in the electoral processes of Catalonia. There are those who defend it all by pointing out that the citizenship is increasingly prepared for this type of campaign and it is certainly true. But that is not the way. It should not be the way for those in government and much less for the media, because I have no doubt that one can still be against independence and without resorting to defamation, invention, dirty wars and the cesspit* of the Spanish state. 

[*also in reference to Las cloacas de Interior TV documentary - 'Spain's Secret Cesspit', regarding 'Operation Catalonia', the smear campaign against pro-independence Catalan officials.]