The old saying goes that those who play with fire will eventually get burned. And nothing less could have been expected from the permanent media overexposure to which the government of Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias have subjected Spain's uniformed officers - that is, the Army, the Civil Guard and the National Police Corps - in an attempt to portray something which does not exist: Spain, a single, united, and uniform country, with a single command after hitting the "delete" key for the always-annoying autonomous communities and, in particular, the Catalan one. Those independence supporters always think about the same thing, as the regime's own newspaper recently presented it, confusing political action and coronavirus crisis management with ideology. Oh, that damned ideology!
This Sunday, the Civil Guard's chief of staff, general José Manuel Santiago, went somewhere he shouldn't have gone when explaining the work his forces are doing to combat fake news: "We work with our specialists in two directions: by sending information to prevent the social stress that these continual lies form, and, as well, to minimize the negative climate against the government's management of the crisis." His words left no doubt: the Civil Guard was working to limit freedom of expression and to "minimize the climate against the government".
There was no margin for squeezing out of this: the general's foot-in-mouth was obvious and, even accepting the Spanish government's explanation that it was an unfortunate slip of the tongue, it added insult to injury as this government is no stranger to using the freedom of expression to give perks to some and punish others. Media advertising budgets are spent according to favours received, and have little or nothing to do with audience figures but rather with ideological approval. In the end, the key element behind the Spanish government's "we'll stop this virus together" campaign is how it spends public money.
It is obvious that the right is exaggerating when it reacts to the statements of the Civil Guard general with pure posturing. Vox taking a Civil Guard general to court and linking him with the start of a coup by the Spanish government is pure nonsense and provocation for pyromaniacs. What is clear, though, is that there is a debate about freedoms, and among them, the freedom of expression. But it's not new: rather, it began long ago, and had its peak in the fabrication of a false narrative about what happened in September and October 2017 in Catalonia, which ended up with the Catalan government being sacked and its members put in exile or in prison, in addition to the speaker of the Catalan Parliament and the leaders of civil groups Òmnium and the ANC.
We have stated this again and again but no one has listened or wanted to know anything about the irresponsible police reports that were accepted as correct in the persecution of an ideology. Of course there is a problem of freedoms - but not the one the PP and Vox want to exploit in their own self-interest. Rather, one that is much more serious and profound, which has to do with the quality of democracy.