Cerdán and Sánchez: between infection and the firewall

The axe-wielding division between newspapers from both sides is becoming increasingly apparent. Right-wing newspapers on Tuesday reported on Santos's imprisonment in headlines that called him "Sánchez's number three" (The reason), "architect of the Sánchez government" (The World) and "Sánchez's right hand man" (Abc). That is, all three explicitly link him to the Spanish president, attempting to taint him through contact. The Planeta newspaper goes the furthest, with an editorial headlined "Sanchismo goes to prison; elections now." On the other hand, the newspapers most friendly to the socialist leader try to cut the connection between the alleged corrupt leader and Sánchez by omitting the latter's name from their headlines. And so, it is no coincidence that Cerdán is identified in these newspapers. The Country as "former secretary of organization of the PSOE" (that is, already deceased, and the position is related not to the person but to the party) or The Vanguard as "former number three of the PSOE" (with the same technique of adding the particle eg and dissolve his sin in the party as a whole).

The corruption cases of recent decades, regardless of their political colour, are linked by a well-known scheme: the plumbers party members carry out their shady operations, so if they are caught, the leaders look astonished and, at best, are seen as naive, incapable of controlling the corral, but free of criminal guilt. From there, the hostile media seeks to provoke contagion, while the sympathetic ones seek to stem the flow with semiotic tricks. In the middle, the reader ends up feeling like they are caught between two biases that prevent them from drawing a reasoned conclusion about the degree of involvement of everyone in the plot. And the corrupt are happy, of course.