The 'anti-Francoist' left is reviving Francoist censorship against journalists in Spain

A major advantage of democracy was that in this political system, political censorship of journalists had been abolished.

Amid a wave of socialist corruption, the left approves censorship of journalists
The left attacks press freedom alongside a party that does not condemn the murders of two Spanish journalists

I speak in the past tense because I am writing these lines from Spain. Yesterday, the Bureau of the Congress of Deputies, controlled by the Socialists of the PSOE and the Communists of Sumar, suspended the press accreditations of two right-wing journalists, Vito Quiles and Bertand Ndongo. The suspension was justified by the claim that both journalists have several open cases before the Advisory Council on Communication, which is also controlled by the left. It so happens that neither Quiles nor Ndongo have any judicial conviction for exceeding the limits of their freedom of expression and information, and I say this because in a democracy it is the judges who set the limits of these freedoms.

In short: those journalists have been banned from Congress for being a nuisance to the left. With this authoritarian decision, typical of anti-democrats and violating fundamental rights protected by the Constitution, the PSOE and Sumar, parties that claim to be "anti-Francoist" (last year they celebrated the 50th anniversary of Franco's death in grand style, trying to convince us that they represented the complete opposite of the dictatorship), have restored the Francoist censorship that the left has denounced on so many occasions, but which it has not hesitated to revive to intimidate and silence the media that dare to investigate and ask about the corruption scandals that affect the government, the PSOE, and Sánchez's personal circle.

These anti-democratic attitudes are not unusual on the Spanish left. A year ago I pointed out here that in the Congress of Deputies there are six parties that support dictatorships and all six are left-wing, including the PSOE and Sumar. Let us also remember that socialists and communists approved this censorship of journalists in Congress with the support of a party, Bildu, which does not condemn the murders of two Spanish journalists by the terrorist group ETA: José María Portell Manso, director of the Hoja del Lunes de Bilbao (shot dead in Bilbao on June 28, 1978), and José Luis López de la Calle, columnist for the newspaper El Mundo (shot dead in Andoáin on May 7, 2000).

Thus, in Spain we have parties that censor journalists who are inconvenient, with the support of those who consider it legitimate to shoot such journalists. Something like this would be cause for alarm if these parties were marginal, but in our case we are talking about parties that are in the Spanish government. Let us remember that in 2023, the communists of Sumar presented an initiative to legalize the crime of glorifying terrorism, stating that glorifying ETA murderers, including the murderers of those two journalists, is "freedom of speech," in Sumar's words. They are the same ones who are now offended because two journalists ask uncomfortable questions.

Definitely, what should be subject to bans in Spain are not inconvenient journalists (on the contrary: they are a species we must protect, because they are on the verge of extinction in a profession dominated by propagandists in the service of those in power), but rather totalitarian politicians who want to turn Spain into a copy of dictatorships like Cuba, Venezuela, China, or Nicaragua.

Article 6 of the Constitution states that the creation and operation of political parties "are free within the limits of respect for the Constitution and the law." We must say it loud and clear: parties that violate freedom of the press, protected in Spain by Article 20 of the Constitution, should have no place in any democracy, and even less so if those parties consider the murder of journalists legitimate.

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Photo: PSOE.