Snooping around Pedro Sánchez's WhatsApps

The World opens its Sunday front page with screenshots of private WhatsApp conversations between Pedro Sánchez and José Luis Ábalos. They were obtained by digging into the case being investigated by the former Socialist MP, currently a member of the mixed group, implicated in the so-called Koldo case. The newspaper headlines the story: "Sánchez's 'marking' of the barons: "They are hypocrites." And it offers fragments that are of relative newsworthiness, since their value lies not so much in what they reveal as in the frankness with which the Spanish president expresses himself, mistakenly assuming that the conversation will never see the light of day. For example, it says: "I just finished the nauseating interview that La Razón conducted with Page [...]. I think it would be a good idea for both you and Santos to give him a warning and for him to stop bothering everyone."

The case raises the question of whether someone's private communications should be allowed to be published so freely. The instinct is to say yes, that they are nevertheless of public relevance, because they reveal the internal tensions within the PSOE and the party leader's attempts to stifle critical voices. But, at the same time, there is something perverse about the detritus-strewn highways that link certain court cases with certain newsrooms always ready to be smeared by the thick-mouthed. To the longed-for You judge, Carles Canut playing Rafeques said that "You can't kill everything fat." And so much so: the right-wing media have been exploiting for months the alleged indiscreet email from the Attorney General about Ayuso's partner, but now they have no qualms about violating the privacy of a conversation that was never intended to be public and, therefore, was done in a non-presidential tone. As morbid as it may be to pry into his WhatsApp In Sánchez, it is still foul play.