Sánchez is trying to cover up his scandals with a serious attack on freedom of speech

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) continues its habit of alternating corruption scandals with gestures of authoritarianism.

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After attacking the judges and the media that investigate the PSOE corruption cases and threatening censorship against social media users, now it's the turn of the Catholic Church, one of the Spanish institutions that the PSOE has never managed to control. Yesterday, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Luis Argüello, defended the need for a motion of censure or an early election. He is not the only one: it is the same thing that political leaders, civil associations, media outlets, and millions of Spaniards have been supporting in the exercise of their right to freedom of expression.

The PSOE has reacted with the same virulence that it already displayed against judges and media. Yesterday, Pedro Sánchez published a message on Twitter stating: "The time when bishops interfered in politics ended when democracy began in this country." It is a paradox to see the president of the Spanish government, a politician who has committed to respecting the Spanish Constitution, invoking democracy to deny Spanish citizens their right to opine on political matters. This gives us an idea of the curious concept of democracy and freedom of expression that both Sánchez and his party have.

Of course, the bishops have the same right to opine on political matters as any other Spanish citizen. There is no law that restricts that right, as there is with the military due to the particular nature of their profession. When Sánchez denies that right to the bishops, what the socialist leader invokes is not a democracy, but a dictatorship, which is that type of regime in which people who disagree with political power have no right to opine.

The attack by Sánchez's government on the bishops' freedom of expression did not stop there. Yesterday, the socialist newspaper El País stated: «Minister Bolaños sends a protest letter to the president of the Episcopal Conference for suggesting that elections be called: “I expressly ask you to refrain from breaking your neutrality and act with respect toward democracy and the Government”». It is the same government that has been attacking the Supreme Court for weeks for issuing a condemnatory sentence against the former Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz. That is their idea of respect toward democracy, specifically toward one of its pillars, which is judicial independence.

If Sánchez's message on Twitter is something serious, Bolaños's letter is an intolerable act in a democracy: a government ordering a private institution like the Catholic Church to be silent through an official letter from a member of the Ministry of Justice. The Catholic Church and other religious confessions have no legal duty of neutrality. They are private institutions and therefore enjoy the same rights as any other association in Spain. In fact, the Catholic Church is not neutral nor should it be: it has a commitment to the truth and to very well-defined values and its duty is to defend the truth and those values also in the political sphere if necessary.

Both Sánchez's message and Bolaños's letter are a serious attack on freedom of expression. One more, one might say, since it is not the first that this government does against those who say things that are not to their liking. It is a new attempt to cover up the socialist scandals by kicking the pillars of democracy, perhaps in the belief that the unsustainable situation of this government can be alleviated by intimidating the citizens who feel scandalized by everything we are seeing. With those kicks to democracy, Sánchez and his gang only demonstrate how urgent it is for them to abandon power, especially when they have already lost the parliamentary majority with which Sánchez achieved his re-election after having lost the last elections.

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Photo: PSOE.