An American correspondent who asked my opinion and predictions about what will happen in Spain this Sunday ended his interview by asking what I would vote for. I told him that we Spaniards are not in the habit of showing off our votes or our salary, unlike in his country, where people decorate their gardens with little flags of their candidate and tell you how much they earn before telling you their first names. I also confessed, embarrassed, I don’t know yet. I could therefore invoke indecisiveness to dodge the bulge, but instead I felt modestly attacked, and a little taken aback by that feeling (am I a picky prude? I wondered), I began to suspect that I might also belong to another group on the brink of extinction: that of the booth and curtain voters.
If David Broncano broke the taboo on talking about money by asking his guests on The Resistance for the balance of his bank account, the poll may have expired too. Some fellow columnists proclaim it with fanfare, confident that their voice is public service information. Maybe they do it with the illusion that others won’t attribute it to them, because in this election campaign politicians behaved like chicken sexers with journalists. What if it’s friends or foes, what if I don’t go to such a chain …
Of course journalists go to vote, and not all of them are as indecisive or humble as I am, but from there it seems that those who are in the elections are the TV presenters or that the interviewers’ questions are judged more harshly than the respondents’ answers, there is a very worrying abyss. I’ll be an old man, but I thought it was about checking the candidates and I’ve seen little of that.
You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVSIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Receive the TV newsletter
All the news from channels and platforms, with interviews, news and analyses, as well as recommendations and criticism from our journalists
REGISTRATION
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits