Return to 2016 to cover up Rajoy's appearance

BarcelonaIt is common, when someone publishes a topic, for a finger to be raised and to ask: “Yes, okay, but why now?”. In my experience, most of the time a topic is published when it is finished, but it is true that there are coincidences that make one frown. This Thursday, for example, while a former Spanish Prime Minister like Mariano Rajoy was appearing as a witness in the trial of the Kitchen case (a not unprecedented, but totally exceptional event), The Objective dropped a supposed exclusive video of the federal committee of the PSOE from October 2016, which ended with Pedro Sánchez's resignation from the general secretariat.

The videos did not contribute anything informative, but they did serve the PP to try, at least on social networks, to divert attention from what was happening that day in the Audiencia Nacional.

But it was not only the work of The Objective, which is a specifically anti-Sánchez media outlet where the loyalists to Antonio Caño ended up when they fired him from El País, but also of El Mundo. This newspaper was opening its website all day, not with Rajoy's declaration but with that of Javier Hidalgo, former executive director of Globalia and Air Europa, in the Senate's investigation commission on the Begoña case. The reader will wonder what Hidalgo told the senators to deserve such treatment. Well, the answer is nothing, because he availed himself of his right not to answer.

There is no journalistic argument that can support this decision. El Mundo could have chosen to open with the conflict in the Middle East, which could have been justifiable. The next day, no right-wing Madrid newspaper considered that Rajoy should open the front page, something that El País did. In Catalonia, La Vanguardia also considered it, while the rest, including the ARA, opted for Sant Jordi.