Mario Vaquerizo, Miguel Bosé and the silence syndrome

We live in a time of splendor for victimhood. Being a victim is a pain. I'm not referring to the real victims, who are indeed struggling today, yesterday, and tomorrow, but to a whole series of figures who base their discourse on claiming to be silenced by the system. We saw it this week with Miguel Bosé's infamous visit to The anthill, where he explained the alleged ostracism suffered for his opinions, for example, on the vaccine issue. Of course, the narrative of silencing falls apart a bit when you make this proclamation from the most-watched program on all of Spanish television. This week, we've also seen Mario Vaquerizo making a fuss in front of the cameras, explaining—for the umpteenth time—that he isn't invited to La Revuelta and suggesting that, if it's "everyone's house," as befits a public channel, he should have a seat. I don't think it's a coincidence that both figures have been drifting toward the far right, which has excelled in the art of gaining a lot of media attention by repeating right and left that they didn't have it, even when the cameras ultimately fell at the feet of their populist and spurious rhetoric. In Catalonia, we've had plenty of experience with this technique. It's the one Ciutadans used every time they stepped onto a TV3 set, to complain about not being on TV3 enough, in front of the TV3 cameras and for the TV3 audience.

But TVE has a difficult task at hand, as TV3 once did. On the one hand, its public nature forces it to be balanced. But on the other, it would be naive to ignore the fact that it lives in a media landscape that is completely unbalanced toward the right and beyond. What if balance were to compensate and give air to the truly proscribed positions? That is, those who will never be able to go to the homes of Motos, Quintana, or Griso to tell hundreds of thousands of viewers how they are, silenced.