Eureka! I have finally found the key to that Mecano song that said “And that something that is myself is a bifrontism painting that only shows one face”. José María Cano was talking about the Spanish press, specifically when talking about the economy. The march of a country, from the point of view of the numbers, can be expressed with so many different figures that you just need to choose the right one according to each person's editorial weaknesses to paint a luminous Monet or a tenebrous Caravaggio landscape. In La Vanguardia, today happy violins played to announce that “The deficit falls to 2.2%, the lowest in 18 years”. On the other hand, in La Razón the most apocalyptic metals vibrated with the headline “Public debt reached the historical annual mark in 2025: 1.689 trillion”. Both figures are correct, but it is evident that they impact the mood in opposite ways.
Although they are two different magnitudes, in reality both express the good progress of the economy. If there is more public debt, it is thanks to the fact that GDP is growing at a good pace and this allows for a little more spending. Through gritted teeth, La Razón ends up admitting that in percentage terms the figure is falling. It is the classic trap of absolute values, which also plays when it says that Catalonia is the autonomous community with the most debt: if we look at the percentage of GDP, it turns out that the Valencian Community (40.7%) widely exceeds the Catalan 28.2%. Putting the absolute figure is absurd: the four with the most debt, oh surprise, are the four with the largest population. It is about showing only one face, as always. And in the case of La Razón, if the socialists are in power or if Catalonia is mentioned, it has to be the most unpleasant and grotesque face. As Mecano also said, whom I now discover as proto-Machiavellians, “this cemetery is not serious”.
