Salvados kicked off the season this Sunday with a posthumous portrait, in two acts, of Rita Barberà, mayor of Valencia for 24 years, marked above all by the era of the pelotazo of the PP, and a key figure of the party in the times of Mariano Rajoy. The program began with Mozart's Requiem, anticipating the dramatic end of the protagonist, while alternating fragments of paintings from revolutionary and Napoleonic France as a metaphor for her political progression: from the most obscene power institutionalized and respected by the elites to popular agitation and the final lynching.Gonzo interviewed friends, party colleagues, and political rivals to explain in detail Barberà's trajectory. The two parts of the program used the folklore of Valencia to represent the two stages: the mascletà, about the great explosion and peak of the mayoress, and the cremà, to refer to the descent into hell of the protagonist betrayed by her own party. Barberà's inner circle – with Francisco Camps, José Manuel García-Margallo, councilwoman Mayrén Beneyto, and journalist María Consuelo Reyna – built a hagiography of the character that was a bit difficult to stomach from the current perspective. Beneyto and Reyna, moreover, spoke with the frankness of someone who no longer needs to make political calculations to choose their words. The emeritus king was portrayed in history as the main instigator of placing Urdangarin in the cribs of that opulent Valencia that organized regattas, Formula 1 races, and whatever was needed to line one's pockets. The program was filled with archival images that recovered the delirious politics of arrogance and corruption, with Barberà's greatest hits, her "caloret faller" and the Louis Vuitton bags.The shadows of Rita Barberà served to portray the fratricidal struggles of the PP during the party's collapse, with Rajoy at the helm. From the noise of the firecrackers and the smoke that covered everything to the stench of scorched remains. But here the program seemed more interested in recalling all the internal rot of the party and the low morals of its leaders than in delving deeply into Barberà's political legacy and the aftermath for the city of Valencia.It was inevitable to wonder why now, almost ten years after her death, the figure of Rita Barberà was being recovered to kick off the television season. At a time when all the private channels dedicate a large part of their schedule to attacking Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE, it seemed like an approach to compensate for the back-and-forth of the media right. On the other hand, the program about Barberà once again highlighted the journalistic inertia of delving into major political episodes when it is already too late. It is true that it makes it easier for witnesses to speak with more frankness, but journalism and the citizens' indignation have already transformed into the memory of an era.

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.