Hello,
How was your week? All good?
First thing: remember that today is the last day of voting on our Statute. If you haven’t already, you can easily vote from here. Thanks for participating!
This week in which we vote for our Statute, I am celebrating an anniversary that makes me especially excited: 20 years of my blog, Escolar.net. That I started writing on May 16, 2003 and already then headed with the current motto: “At that time it seemed like a good idea.” It certainly was.
Thanks to that blog, I was later able to found elDiario.es, which began to grow largely due to the recommendations of people who already read Escolar.net. It was a small seed that, for all of us who have made elDiario.es possible (also you, and the rest of our partners), allowed us to build this newspaper that you read today. So congratulations on the anniversary to you too. Even more so if you are one of those who already read me on Escolar.net. Thanks for still here.
“You are ETA. I am ETA. We are ETA and anyone who protests is always ETA. Only they are not ETA. In essence, we Spaniards are divided into two groups: the “good citizens” (registered trademark) and the rest, the ETA members.”
The previous paragraph is the start of an article I wrote more than a decade ago in Escolar.net. I’m afraid it’s still up to date. And it is not my merit, but the Popular Party. Which year after year has continued to use the pain of terrorism for its electoral strategy.
Doesn’t it seem obscene to you that the main topic of debate in these regional and municipal governments is once again ETA? Well, we’ve been like this all season. And when you think that the public debate can no longer sink any lower, the Popular Party surprises you once again.
Some obvious things to remember:
Pedro Rollán, the senator of “the ashes of Hipercor”, is part of the PP of Madrid. The same party chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The same one from which Vox split. The same one that is indistinguishable from the extreme right in so many approaches, such as what the president of Madrid said this Thursday:
Isabel Díaz Ayuso: “ETA is alive, it is in power. He lives on our money. It undermines our institutions. He wants to destroy Spain, deprive millions of Spaniards of their constitutional rights and provoke a confrontation.”
Several ETA victims came out to respond to Ayuso. “It is trivialization in its purest form. It does not respect the dead,” criticized Consuelo Ordóñez, president of the Covite victims’ association, the same one that denounced the presence of those convicted of terrorism on the municipal lists of EH Bildu.
Consuelo is the sister of Gregorio Ordóñez, a PP councilor in San Sebastián assassinated by ETA.
Ayuso’s response to these criticisms? Well, it is indecent, even for its usual level: to accuse Consuelo Ordóñez of having “personal problems with the PP”.
At this rate, Consuelo Ordóñez will also be ETA. It is the last thing we need to hear.
Ayuso’s strategy hits the mark even for the middle level of the Popular Party. She is the only important leader of this party who continues to defend the illegalization of EH Bildu, exactly the same thing that Vox is asking for. And that Alberto Núñez Feijóo has ruled out. But that does not mean that Feijóo is outside of this infamous electoral strategy.
This Tuesday, Feijóo accused Pedro Sánchez of being “more generous with the executioners than with the victims.” A victim of ETA, the journalist Gorka Landáburu, responded in an interview that we published today:
“It is an ignominy to use terrorism to divide the democratic people of this country, the democracy that we have worked so hard to establish. Those words obviously do not reflect reality. They are lies and they remind me a lot of those of Mariano Rajoy who, in 2005, in parliament, accused President Zapatero of having betrayed the victims. This is unacceptable. Once again, they use the terrorism of an ETA that no longer exists solely for partisan interests and electoral gains”.
Gorka Landáburu also criticizes EH Bildu, for still carrying “a very loaded backpack”. “They have to do self-criticism and renounce their past, they are trying to turn the page without having read the previous one.”
Everything is ETA. And for this very reason I have thought a lot about the meaning of this week’s letter, which falls into an obvious contradiction. On the one hand, I hate that this absurd debate monopolizes the entire electoral campaign. On the other, I believe that we must respond to such rude manipulations. Maybe I’m wrong talking more about this matter, I don’t know. If I’m wrong, I hope you can forgive me.
Before I say goodbye, four more recommendations.
I hope your weekend is great. That you take good care of your plants: I wish I was as good at it as my mother, I always spend or fall short with watering. I hope that the articles by Diego Olivares –our new expert collaborator on plants– will help me so that this does not happen to me anymore.
Thanks for reading me. And thank you for your support of elDiario.es. This newspaper exists because of people like you.
A hug,
Ignatius School
PS And if you like what we do, and you can afford it, increase your quota.
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