The Sánchez government's hoaxes about infrastructure chaos and what they tell us

When a government knows it's done something wrong, the loyal thing to do would be to admit it. But Pedro Sánchez's government isn't loyal.

A blackout with deaths and no resignations: socialism never admits mistakes in Spain
The AVE cables, China and Spain, a country where stealing is very cheap for a thief

The government fuels theories about sabotage without any foundation

Spain is witnessing a series of events that are causing concern among many Spaniards. On Monday, April 28, the massive national blackout occurred, the first to affect a European country and one that exposes the clumsy transition planned by the Socialists to renewable energy. Significantly, the government has refused to rule out the possibility of an attack, despite it being a possibility ruled out by Red Eléctrica de España, the state-controlled company that manages the supply of electricity to all of Spain.

Last Sunday brought new chaos with the theft of cables from the high-speed railway lines between Madrid and Seville, an incident that has affected thousands of passengers and caused outrage, as railway problems in Spain have worsened in recent months. For now, what we know about what happened is that the Civil Guard is investigating these events as a robbery, despite which the Minister of Transport, the socialist Óscar Puente, has spoken of "sabotage", a thesis reaffirmed yesterday by the government spokesperson, Minister Pilar Alegría, also a member of the Socialist Party (PSOE).

The hoax spread by the government about “right-wing sabotage”

This Tuesday we learned that these unfounded claims about an alleged attack related to the blackout and railway sabotage are not coincidental: the government issued a slogan blaming both problems on "right-wing sabotage", in a clear reference to two opposition parties, the Popular Party and Vox. Basically, what the government is doing with this slogan is promoting a conspiracy theory knowing it is a lie, to evade its responsibility for these events.

It is a paradox that the same government that in February proposed to intervene in social networks using hoaxes as a pretext, threatening to suppress the right to anonymity on those social networks as a solution, is now dedicating itself to spreading hoaxes to promote conspiracy theories to demonize the opposition and shift the blame on them for matters that are the government's direct responsibility. What Sánchez and his cabinet do not seem to have taken into account is that these hoaxes indicate what has really happened with the blackout and the theft of railway cables.

What these hoaxes indicate: the government knows what happened...

Obviously, a government with intelligence services as competent as the CNI and INCIBE must know perfectly well what caused the blackout and the railway chaos on Sunday. The government said yesterday that it will need between three and six months to clarify the causes of the blackout, but if that were true, the government itself would not be spreading rumors about it. The day after the blackout, I already warned here that Sánchez was trying to buy time until people stop talking about the blackout. That's why the government hasn't been in a hurry to find out its causes, after stating that there would be no blackouts in Spain in 2022.

... and it also knows that what happened was its responsibility

But these hoaxes don't just tell us that the government knows the real cause of what happened. Furthermore, if the government feels the need to lie so blatantly, it's because it knows that what happened was its responsibility. Up until now, we've had clear rational indications pointing in that direction. If there's been a national blackout in Spain, with a government determined to shut down nuclear power plants, and not in France, the country with the most nuclear power plants in Europe, it's not hard to imagine the cause.

Similarly, if Spain has been experiencing railway chaos for some time, something that doesn't happen in other European countries, it's not difficult to imagine who is responsible without having to resort to conspiracy theories. We have a government that is neglecting public services because it has other priorities, such as pleasing the separatist parties on whose votes Sánchez depends to remain in power. Furthermore, the colonization of public institutions by the socialists indicates that political affinity is prioritized over merit, and this corruption of the system has consequences, including the degradation of the public services those institutions are responsible for.

A government that has been breaking records of opacity for years

Thus, every government hoax about these events only serves to indicate its responsibility for them. A government that acted with transparency and loyalty would not do what Sánchez and his cabinet are doing. In fact, Sánchez has been breaking records for opacity for years, rejecting more and more requests for information and turning control sessions in Congress into a succession of attacks on the opposition instead of being accountable as is his duty.

The Cuban and Venezuelan exiles had already warned us

You don't have to look far to find examples of countries where a ruler manages to degrade public services through an irresponsible exercise of power, constantly refusing to explain his actions and be accountable to the citizens. This is precisely what is happening with the dictatorships of Cuba and Venezuela, which share the ideological core of the coalition government of socialists and communists led by Sánchez. The Spanish cannot deny that they were warned: Cuban and Venezuelan exiles have been warning us for years that this would happen, and many Spaniards did not want to listen to them, supporting at the ballot box the same ideological recipes that have led those two American countries to disaster.

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Photo: Efe. Pedro Sánchez, President of the Spanish Government, with Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport.