Isn't it time to talk about Rita Barberá?

BarcelonaThe program Salvados has announced for this Sunday, September 6, a special program about the figure of Rita Barberá, the mayor of Valencia who seemed indestructible and ended up splashed by the corruption scandals of the Valencian PP, cornered by her party and dying alone in a hotel room. The post of the program announcement has been filled with critical comments from people who consider that, given how everything is going (Ceuta, price increases, etc.), it was not the time to dedicate a report to Barberá. As for me, I will judge the result next Sunday, once I have seen the program, but I can anticipate that the summary that serves as promotion seems very interesting to me to portray an era and a certain way of doing politics.

But let's get to the point. Is it convenient to talk about Rita Barberá now? The answer is "Why not?" I understand that the colleagues from Salvados work with a lot of foresight, and this documentary was conceived and made long before the crisis in Ceuta or the July fires. And of all the Spanish political stories of recent years, Rita Barberá's seems to me a real epic that would be worthy of a Netflix series. Not for nothing, no member of the PP executive at the time of her death has wanted to appear on the program. Why might that be? Well, because the PP carries a strong sense of guilt over Barberá's death, an episode that is particularly uncomfortable for them and, by extension, for their voters.

And then there is another issue. Whenever I am asked: "Why are you bringing this up now?", the answer is "Because now is when we have been able to tie it up and verify it." The tempos of journalism do not always respond to a conspiratorial view of politics. Simply, a topic is thought about, it is carried out (if possible, because in investigation cases they don't always come out), and it is published. And that is what I understand the colleagues from Salvados have done.