economy and politics

Cebrián scolds you all for having betrayed the Transition

Cebrián scolds you all for having betrayed the Transition

Converts are the worst. They try to hide it, but they always run the risk of someone reminding them of their past. To solve this embarrassing situation, the usual thing is to endure the push and give it a lot of face. This is what Juan Carlos Girauta does, who is already in his fourth game, but he says that he has not moved from where he was. It is the others who moved while he remained undaunted in the same place. The PSC moved, the PP moved, Ciudadanos moved, the Earth moved, the Sun moved, and Girauta suddenly found that he had remained in Vox territory. The universe turns left at high speed leaving you with no choice but to sign up for a new formation. They’re going to end up driving him crazy, but in the meantime he already has another salary as an elected official.

Juan Luis Cebrián is another of those who have shown great ability in lateral movement. Of course he says that those who have moved and in a bad way have been Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE. In general, reality has collapsed in the face of their discontent. He claims that we are governed by “idiots”, and not only in Spain. Practically all over the world. He comments that when he was at university, De Gaulle governed (in France). We are in the last.

At the presentation of his latest book –’The Sánchez effect’– which is a compilation of articles, was attended on Monday by Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo. The Popular Party deputy has the sharpest tongue on the Spanish right and the most precise aim. After all, it shows that he has read a lot. The truth is that the same cannot be said about Feijóo and Tellado. Cebrián had the opportunity to try their bites, and they were kind.

Never shy when it comes to impressing his audience, Álvarez de Toledo began by acknowledging the obvious. “If Polanco saw me here, I wonder what he would say. “I would say that Cebrián has gone crazy.” An interesting assumption that many of the journalists who worked for him are likely to share.

From there he went on to remember that his debut in politics was precisely to attack the Prisa company of which Cebrián was then its main director under the orders of Jesús de Polanco. “My first action in politics was to promote the boycott of Grupo Prisa,” he said, alluding to his party’s response to a speech by Polanco that called a PP demonstration “pure Francoism.”

That boycott of Prisa’s media did not end on a specific date, the representative stated, but rather it ended up diluting over time, and it was not clear if she regrets it or thinks it was the appropriate end.

“I am not at all clear that the Juan Luis of today is the same as the Juan Luis of before,” he explained later, thus closing what we could call the Girauta exit. But that’s not your problem. “Cebrián has focused and the PSOE has gone to extremes.” So I’m a little bit of a convert, yes.

The former director of El País and former president of Prisa felt obliged to deny it: “Cayetana is happy, because I have changed a lot, but I have changed almost nothing.” Then, like Girauta, the fault would be that of El País and the PSOE. Or the country, with a lowercase letter.

When it came to punishing the party that he supported so much from the newspaper he directed, he did not fall short, which pleased his interlocutor. “The PSOE is not a party. It is a sect and threatens to become a mafia,” he announced, thus coinciding with the radical views of the most combative media on the right. Now he writes in one of them, The Objective, whose president of the Editorial Board is Antonio Caño, whom Cebrián appointed director of El País to make it right until the company discovered that they were leading them to ruin. “We tried to be right-wing, but it didn’t work,” the company’s new majority shareholder said years later.

As a great exclusive, he said that deputies and ministers of the PSOE are not workers in reference to the name of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party. Seeing someone with Cebrián’s personal and professional background accuse others of not being workers is something that draws attention. It’s not that I’m to blame for that – everyone is born where they are born and dedicates themselves to what they want – although neither does the others.

Another of his fifth who is unleashed, and who was also at the presentation, was the writer Félix de Azúa, collaborator of El País for decades and today, what a coincidence, also in The Objective. The Government has become “a tyranny or a satrapy or it is not clear which regime it is addressing,” he stated. The good thing about inviting writers like him to a book presentation is that they use words like ‘satrapy’.

At 80 years old, the only thing he personally regrets is not being younger, because others would find out. “If I were 50 years younger, I would tell you that the time has come for action, civic action. “I’m not saying we become Hamas.” It’s a relief not to have to imagine Azúa with a green ribbon on his head and a Kalashnikov in his hand. The bad thing is that he immediately announced that “the time for words has run out.” Civic action without words. It sounds strange coming from a writer. That is a concept that should be worked on more.

In that confusion between El País and the country that has always given rise to so many misunderstandings, Álvarez de Toledo referred to the newspaper in not very kind terms. Although she could have been referring to the second, she seemed to be talking about the newspaper with a phrase appropriate precisely to someone who has not forgotten the boycott she mentioned and about which she is so satisfied. “Today it’s sad and sometimes it’s even funny,” he said. Cebrián preferred not to follow that line.

It is only a coincidence that the event coincided with the first article by a new contributor to the opinion section of El País. It is another signing made in the right field. So that his friends do not tell him that he has sold himself to Prisa, the author has begun his journey giving a good kick to one of the great icons of the left in culture, Pedro Almodóvar. These things did not happen when Cebrián ran the newspaper or presided over the company. Once a literary critic published a very negative review from a writer from Alfaguara and things didn’t end well. For the critic, of course.

In this line of abjuring everything that has been done in Spain since Zapatero, because no criticism was heard from the right, Cebrián said that “there is a direct betrayal of the spirit of the Transition.” He does not understand that this country, like any other, can be governed with different criteria than those of the 1980s. There are those who think that they should live in the Spain of the past or believe that the maximum point of intelligence in the history of politics was then reached.

At this point, many respond with a list of the errors of the Transition from their ideological position. That is not the main issue. It is more relevant to think that it is not possible to repeat the solutions of 40 years ago thinking that they will be as effective as then. The world changes and a few people Cebrián’s age are sure that everything has gone to hell. Financially, he has done very well, but he ended up writing for The Objective. How not to be angry.

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