Where are the media condemnations of the police aggression against Jordi Borràs?

Answer: not in the Madrid press

àlex Gutiérrez
2 min
El fotoperiodista Jordi Borràs, agredit per un suposat policia

BarcelonaAfter the assault by an off-duty Spanish police officer against Catalan photojournalist Jordi Borràs, Albano Dante Fachin speculated what would have happened "if an off-duty Catalan policeman had attacked a reporter, let's say from ABC [a conservative Madrid daily], while shouting 'Visca Catalunya lliure' ("Long live a free Catalonia").

Obviously, the issue would have been front-page news in all the Madrid papers. So what happened, then, with this clear attack on freedom of expression? In El País the story doesn't even get one column: it appears on a left-hand page —always less read than right-hand pages— and without a photo. In ABC it also appears on a left-hand page and, worst of all, it only gets two measly paragraphs. And it was only published in the residual Catalan edition of the newspaper —in Spain, it would not do to disturb their readers' morning croissant.

I can't find the story in the paper editions of El Mundo or La Razón. In Catalonia, the reports tended to be more generous and, in any case, many political pundits have condemned the actions of someone who —just as a suggestion— may not deserve the police badge that he carried, along with the knife he lost while fleeing the scene.

The press can sometimes be ridiculously self-protective. And, in cases like this, it usually reacts by baring its teeth, if someone lays their finger on a colleague. It does so (or should) through solidarity and decency, but also in its own interest: in the end, silence passively legitimizes this coercion of freedom of the press —even more serious, coming from a police officer— through a blow from a fist. But here the victim is pro-independence and the assailant is a Spanish police officer. Time to look the other way and whistle —the Spanish national anthem, for example. But, during the song and the averted glance, in their journalistic entrenchment, they have missed the chance to report on a further example of the debasement of the system they think they are standing up for.

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