Just as last weekend in Spain right-wing people were in favor of Madrid and Formula 1 and left-wingers against it, now the same thing has happened again with the gesture of the Real Madrid stars who did not want to wear the solidarity shirt with Ceuta. While the right-wing press is crucifying them and practically demanding their public stoning, the progressive press has come to the players' rescue. The newspaper El País publishes this Friday an editorial sympathetic to at least one of the players involved, Kylian Mbappé, who is also the only one who has given explanations, in this case to the newspaper As, which, oh surprise, also belongs to the Prisa group. The most curious thing is that when this newspaper published the full interview with the player, it omitted this part.

In Madrid, they still have not digested the act of rebellion by Vinícius, Mbappé, and Konaté in refusing to wear a solidarity shirt for the people of Ceuta. So much so that now they are starting to fire, by elevation, at Florentino Pérez. The best example is an article signed by Kike Marín – a sports journalist with long experience who has worked for Mark andAs– a El Confidencial titled "The offense of Mbappé, Vinícius and Konaté in Ceuta, another symptom of the lack of control at Real Madrid". The journalist points to one of Pérez's main advisors, the Moroccan-born Anas Laghari, as being responsible for this lack of control and for some decisions that are difficult for Madrid fans to understand, such as the low profile the club has adopted regarding the Ceuta cause. "The simple fact that the honorary president of Real Madrid, José Martínez Pirri, even if it is from Ceuta it should embarrass Mbappé, Vinícius and Konaté", he writes. "It seems that the club is slipping out of Florentino's hands", he concludes.

Today is a day when culers, and anti-Madridistas in general, can sit back and eat popcorn while the White House implodes. The refusal of Mbappé, Vinícius, and Konaté to wear a solidarity shirt with Ceuta before the match against Elche has sparked an authentic pitched battle on social media and has fractured Madridismo into two irreconcilable camps. On one hand, there are those who consider these three players traitors to Spain and to the values of the club that pays them, and who, therefore, must be expelled from Real Madrid. And then there are those who consider that politics and sports should not be mixed and downplay it. What is happening? Well, the former are the ones who identify most with the stances of the PP and Vox, and accuse the latter (and the players themselves) of playing into Pedro Sánchez's hands. This is how, for example, Zabala de la Serna writes in El Mundo.

Tempered at The Objective, hired by Abc for her investigations into PSOE corruption, a panelist on esRadio and Horizonte... Ketty Garat has become a new shining star of the 'fatxosfera' (right-wing sphere). In one of her latest appearances on Federico Jiménez Losantos' program, he asks her, as the daughter of a military man, what her opinion is of the photograph taken of King Felipe VI with the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the heads of the three branches of the armed forces: land, sea, and air. And Garat replies: "My father was not only an admiral, but also a member of the Navy leadership, and that forces me to be prudent, but I have my own personal opinion. There is a deep conviction right now, not only in the military sphere but also in the realm of justice, of the Prosecutor's Office, that this government is a democratic danger, it is a threat to democracy".

Formula 1 fans gave their verdict on Sunday regarding the Formula 1 race in Madrid. Searching with the keywords Madring (which is the name of the circuit) and boring resulted in endless lists of complaints from viewers. So much so, that even Minister Puente saw an opportunity to weigh in and described it as a "dud".

My nose tells me that when you have to exaggerate the success of an event a lot, it is because something is failing. These days one can verify the level of nervousness that reigns at Ayuso's place regarding Formula 1 by watching Telemadrid turned into a NO-DO that is shameful. Saturday's news program began with the following headlines. First: "The consecration of Madrid as a temple of F1" (??). Second: "Ayuso and Almeida tour the circuit". Third: "Madrid makes history". Fourth: "The fans crown Madrid". And the fifth was, naturally, about Ceuta.

I imagine that even at El Mundo they have regrets about the treatment they are giving the Ceuta crisis (sensationalist headlines, dehumanization of migrants, etc.) that they have felt obligated to seek a philosophical justification to keep their conscience clear. The person in charge of such a difficult mission has been a writer named Juan Diego Madueño, who clings to the change of opinion of a socialist deputy from Ceuta, who in 2024 said that the immigrants were "children" and now says they are "invaders," seasoned with interviews with three philosophers (the unavoidable Victoria Camps, the over-the-top libertarian Javier Sádaba, and the newspaper's own columnist Jorge Freire) to reach the conclusion that being a good person is a relic of the past: "The Ceuta crisis and the death of do-goodism: 'It is the religion of idiots'."

Sometimes information aligns in a way that creates front pages that concentrate the contradictions and complexities of a country. It is somewhat what happened to El País this Friday. The main headline is about the Supreme Court's decision to temporarily suspend the so-called grandchildren law, which grants the right to vote and nationality to the descendants of the republican exile: "The Supreme Court gives wings to Vox's theory of electoral fraud". The information is so relevant that the newspaper considered it necessary to also include the editorial on the front page, with a headline that leaves no room for doubt: "Legal absurdity".

The award for recycling of the day has been won by the newspaper ABC, which has dug up old interviews and statements by Rafa Nadal to build a story clearly intended to chase clicks and spark debate on social media. The headline was as follows: "I am happy to be Spanish, but when the tax bill arrives I am a little less so". The newspaper begins the information with a very significant fact, and that is that according to the magazine Forbes, Nadal earned 135 million dollars in cash between 2002 and 2024. It should be taken into account that this is only one part, and perhaps not the main one, of the Mallorcan tennis player's source of income. It is estimated that income from sponsorships multiplies this figure by 3 or 4. And then we arrive at the phrase in question. It corresponds to an interview with the Corriere della Sera from the year 2020, the same one in which he explains that his whole family is Madridista, although some switched to Barça when his uncle, Miquel Àngel Nadal, played there. He did not.

When a government makes lists of journalists and classifies them according to ideology, it is inevitable to think of McCarthyism and the famous blacklists of communists. The scandal caused by the list of journalists and pundits that they had at the Ministry of the Interior is surprising because, apart from being a deplorable practice that is reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, it is, above all, unnecessary, because for better or for worse everyone knows where each pundit stands. However, once the list has been analyzed, there are things that stand out. 119 right-wing pundits, 111 left-wing, 41 independent or unaffiliated, and 11 who are described as "moderate" are identified. Therefore, it must be said that the list is quite balanced.

Spanish nationalism is certainly curious: it advertises itself as a non-nationalism, as a natural state of affairs that requires no display of self-affirmation, but then, in practice, it competes over such provincial things as who has commissioned the largest flag of Spain. Until now, this record was held by former socialist minister José Bono, who on October 12, 2001, inaugurated at the Plaza Colón in Madrid what was then the largest flag: 294 square meters, 35 kilos, and a 50-meter flagpole. It was only a matter of time, therefore, for some Popular Party leader to take the record from him. The pseudo-media outlet Ok Diario reported proudly on Monday that the new record holder was Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has had a new flag built at the Formula 1 street circuit that exceeds Bono's by 122 square meters, that is, it measures 416.

Obviously, the headline is ironic. And if not, judge for yourselves. It turns out that Eduardo Inda has published an interview with the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on the eve of the Formula 1 Grand Prix celebration. And what follows are the questions he asks her, all very witty and, above all, incisive. First: "We have toured the entire circuit, there are a lot of Spanish flags, right? That's a bit far-right, a bit fascist, a bit reactionary. And that flag, which is bigger than the one in Colón...". Second: "At every turn, everywhere there is the Spanish flag. The government delegate, Francisco Martín, would surely have preferred Bildu flags". Third: "The truth is that what we have seen is impressive, colossal, there is nothing like it in the world". Fourth: "The area full of bars and restaurants is very good, it looks like the Plaza Mayor, with very well-known places. Whose idea was it?". Fifth: "I love so many Spanish flags, I'm very fascist, very far-right, but I love it". Sixth: "What did you think of the banked turn?" Seventh: "They say it will be the circuit with the most public transport in the world". Eighth: "You said that the Grand Prix would not cost the taxpayer a single euro. Do you maintain that?" (This is the only question that is saved, and Ayuso's answer is: "Why can the Catalonia Grand Prix have 40 million and Madrid zero?" In other words, it will cost the taxpayers money.) Ninth: "Manuela Bergerot, spokesperson for Més Madrid, who is a picturesque character, has said that the Grand Prix will not contribute anything to the people of Madrid". Tenth: "Will the Prime Minister come?" Eleventh: "Will any minister or representative of the central government come?" Twelfth: "And the friend of Bildu and ETA, the government delegate".

On September 5, 1976, Joaquim Maria Puyal made the first broadcast in Catalan of a Barça match on Ràdio Barcelona. It was a Barça - Las Palmas game at the Camp Nou and the 'blaugranes' comfortably defeated the Canary Islands team 4-0, with two goals from Johan Cruyff, one from Manolo Clares, and one from Juan Carlos Heredia. Viewed from today, it is hard to imagine the impact that the Catalan-language broadcast must have had at that moment, even for Catalan speakers. I am sure that many years had to pass before the majority of Catalan speakers became accustomed to hearing their own language in spheres that had until then been reserved for Spanish, and that at first, more than one person must have turned up their nose or thought that it would be an experiment with no future.

If the other day we had to congratulate the journalist María Peral and El Español for their exclusive on the police report that pointed to Morocco for the Ceuta crisis, this Friday another journalist, Laura Garófano, has perpetrated a pathetic headline. This one: "The death of an invader with diabetes and the flight of another with chickenpox, latest symptoms of the health crisis in Ceuta". First of all, there is the use of the term "invader" to refer to the migrants who entered Ceuta. The media outlet can hide behind the fact that the RAE dictionary has an acceptation of invade –"to break in, to enter by force"– that could be adapted to the case, but it is evident that the use of the word is not neutral, it seeks to dehumanize the migrants, strip them of any individual dignity and present them collectively as a threat. That is why at ARA we would never use this word.

One of the best indicators to know if a political crisis is leading to social tension is the episodes of violence or intimidation against journalists. In the case of the Ceuta crisis, with an exacerbated Spanish nationalism, the hatred against Pedro Sánchez extends to those media outlets identified as being close to the Spanish government. Thus, for example, this Wednesday a TVE journalist covering the Cibeles demonstration in Madrid in favor of Ceuta (and against Sánchez) had to be protected by the National Police when the attendees heckled him and tried to take his microphone.

Those of us who are of a certain age and have some memory recall a phrase by Federico Jiménez Losantos on Cope radio during the Ibarretxe plan era: "The worst of all is Atutxa, because he seems good." Juan María Atutxa was then Minister of the Interior and would later become President of Parliament. It's curious, but hatred of the PNB is a classic of the Spanish right-wing press, a genre of its own in which the columnist for Abc" José F. Peláez, whom I didn't have the pleasure of knowing, now excels. But after reading his article "Is the PNB the worst in Spain?", I'm clear that a star has been born in the fatxosfèric universe.

The program Salvados has announced for this Sunday, September 6, a special program about the figure of Rita Barberá, the mayor of Valencia who seemed indestructible and ended up splashed by the corruption scandals of the Valencian PP, cornered by her party and dying alone in a hotel room. The post of the program announcement has been filled with critical comments from people who consider that, given how everything is going (Ceuta, price increases, etc.), it was not the time to dedicate a report to Barberá. As for me, I will judge the result next Sunday, once I have seen the program, but I can anticipate that the summary that serves as promotion seems very interesting to me to portray an era and a certain way of doing politics.

This Sunday The World dares to put on the cover the idea that has been circulating for some time in the fachosphere with a formula reminiscent of Enric Juliana: "Aromas of '98 in the regime of '78". It is a quote in quotation marks from an anonymous voice analyzing the crisis from within, but the fact that they have decided to put it on the front page is significant. Spanish nationalism, which was so happy with the victory of the red, has entered a kind of existential crisis in Ceuta. It's as if it has suddenly become aware of the vulnerability of Spanish enclaves in Africa, and this leads to an unsolvable dilemma for Spaniards: to be able to have a border defensible it would be better to abandon Ceuta and Melilla, but then it would be as much as admitting that the Spanish nation is divisible and not inviolable.

It has been a while since they became fashionable on television, the cairns creative and humorous in tone, following in the wake of programs like Pieces, but what is not acceptable is to cross the line of lighthearted programs and use the formula for news. Last Thursday on La Sexta, a particularly unfortunate one was seen related to the death in prison of war criminal Ratko Mladic: "The butcher of Bosnia, cold cuts". I always tell my journalism students to avoid wordplay in headlines at all costs, as it is a distortion that distracts from their primary function. In this case, I understand that the writer thought they could afford this presumably ingenious formula to provoke a smile from the viewer. But in this case, the writer must always, and first and foremost, put themselves in the shoes of the victims of a bloodthirsty figure like Mladic, who coldly planned and executed the murder of 8,000 Bosnians in Srebrenica, the largest massacre to occur in Europe since World War II.

It is common that when a media outlet breaks an exclusive, they claim the topic and follow it up in detail, among other things to prevent others from appropriating it. "This topic must be ours," is often heard in newsrooms. This is precisely what is happening these days The Country with the news of Isabel Díaz Ayuso's penthouse, revealed on July 28 and which is still ongoing, to the despair of the Madrid president, who on August 24 complained that "the gum could no longer be stretched" on the penthouse, in that speech crowned by a very traditional "goodbye fish". But The Country has continued to publish information almost every day, and even a delicious piece on which the obsession of Spaniards with penthouses was analyzed based on cinematographic references such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.