Spain: Who is Really Pulling the Strings?

The microphones betray again the president

Lara, to Zapatero: “Don’t Burn You Out with These Issues”

The open microphones have betrayed Zapatero again. In an episode that remembers the "tensión" on which Gabilondo spoke in the heat of the campaign, [see also this] the president clarified why he helps talking about crisis. "If you instil much pessimism, if you do not say anything positive, it is worse", the president told his host, Jose Manuel Lara, before giving his lecture in the Circle of Economy. The [media] businessman advised him “not to burn him out" with those subjects. The result of adress: yet another speech far from reality.

(Libertad Digital) Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero participated this Saturday in the closing ceremony of the 50th anniversary of the [Catalonian] Circle of Economy, invited by his president, Jose Manuel Lara, with whom he shared the presiding table. In his speech, he talked again about Spain being able to tackle this “period of adjustment" and "deep deceleration" instead of speaking about crisis.

An open microphone, nevertheless, betrayed Zapatero again showing his double game. In a situation very similar to the interview with Gabilondo in which he confessed, off the record, that it was suitable for him “tensión" while he preached a very different thing before the cameras, the president of the Government justified before the businessman the cause of his refusal to talk about crisis, in spite of the cataract of figures and the situation that are already suffering many Spaniards.

"If you instil much pessimism, if you do not say anything positive, it is worse" , the president told Lara, who recognized next, according to the account from EL MUNDO [newspaper], that if Zapatero were very pessimistic, "he would aggravate crisis". "Don’t burn you out with these issues", he suggested him. According to the [media] businessman, the advisable thing is that this optimism stayed into the hands of [minister of the treasury] Solbes or [minister of industry] Sebastian "and that the president of the Government saves himself".

The result of talk was the already known: the announcement of a package of measures in a month against a crisis about which again Zapatero did not speak, and who returned to minimize problems as the rise in inflation with peculiar arguments such as that excluding the food or oil, its rate would be just 2.5 percent.

You can watch the video on the talk off the record between Lara and Zapatero here.

Media tycoon Jose Manuel Lara, president of the Catalonian Circle of Economy, that is, the Catalonian Circle of Businessmen; owns a publishing group that boasts in its webpage of being the world’s seventh largest.

Interestingly, in this group, we can find Spanish nationwide TV channel Antena 3, and national newspaper La Razón, both usually catalogued as “right wing”, although objectively Antena 3 news programs do not go further right beyond “neutral”, and La Razón, exhibits the characteristic European anti-Americanism.

Why has a media tycoon to advise Mr. Zapatero to remain in the reserve, as if he were one of his assets? Why were these words pronounced by the owner of the few so-called right wing TV channels and newspapers? For whom else is Zapatero an asset that should be protected? Who is really pulling the strings? What is the game they all are playing?

May I suggest that in this case it is called misinforming the Spanish right wing public opinion?

The Spanish problems are often portrayed internationally as caused by Zapatero and Socialism. It is a pretty catchy argument, especially for the American conservatives; however, things sadly are never so simple: Zapatero seems to have support of many of the top Spanish businessmen, support translated, among other things, into a full control of the media.

Behind the warm nanny-state face of the Spanish Socialists and their overly dramatic initiatives, what kind of monster, commanding Spain’s economy and media, will we find?

Has Socialism already degenerated into Fascism?

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More on 3/11 here:
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An introduction to the case: Spain’s “Terrorgate”? by Frank J. Gaffney Jr.

More data on 3/11 in Spanish here:
Luis del Pino's blog

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