Zapatero's wife, guilty of eating chard

One of the dysfunctions of journalism occurs when the hunt against a character is opened and then a anything goes is declared that often causes secondhand embarrassment. The newspaper Abc dedicated a whole piece to analyzing what they ate at La Moncloa in Zapatero's time. They take his wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, and describe her as a kind of food Taliban, with phrases like “a very specific and non-negotiable routine”, “a rule that was repeated practically every day”, “a particularly strict dietary discipline”, “rutines that completely marked the usual functioning of the presidential kitchens”. You read on and, in the end, you realize that this reign of terror in the kitchen was, basically, prioritizing plant-based foods as the basis of the diet and preferring fish as animal protein, over red meat. In other words, what all nutritionists recommend if you want to buy as few numbers as possible in the lottery of heart attack or colon cancer.

The newspaper always writes it in extreme terms to portray her as a Miss Rottenmeier: “The obsession with maintaining a healthy diet did not only affect the couple. It also extended to their daughters, Laura and Alba, whose diet was particularly controlled”. Considering that they were 8 and 10 years old when they arrived at La Moncloa, it is reasonable that their mother set the guidelines for them: if I could have chosen as a child, I would have had a combined plate of Matutano chips and Phoskitos for lunch and dinner every day. And I was going to write that they only lacked saying “And you already know who was vegetarian: Hitler!”, but it occurred to me – with great contempt for my mental integrity – to look at the comments on the news and, indeed, there are those who seriously remember it. The piece is a sexist blunder, and the best they could do is confit it. If it weren't for the fat or the sugar, of course.