The national toilet vomit

Yesterday's shameful appearance by Leire Díez is an invitation to begin this article with a tragicomic tone. Using, for example, the hackneyed example of Commissioner Torrente as a guiding thread. But the matter is too serious to be treated as a joke. The national toilet vomits up everything that everyone has poured into it with the false hope that it will simply swallow. And no one can be in the mood for laughter when, in the most literal sense, it's now impossible to explain the intricacies of national politics without stepping in excrement.

Yesterday, we saw the true background of the Leire Díez case live. On the one hand, she and her bodyguard, Javier Pérez Dolset, a businessman trying to gain future advantage to deal with his legal problems over an alleged hydrocarbon scam. To do so, he traffics information that benefits the interests of a government from which he expects generous treatment in exchange for his contributions. On the other, Víctor de Aldama, the alleged broker in the Koldo plot and also linked to the hydrocarbon scam that landed him in prison. He was quickly released from prison after agreeing to collaborate with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office in the hope of lightening the burden of his problems. In his case, the information trafficking he engages in intensely aims to seriously harm the government and the PSOE: "This one (referring to Leire Díez), Santos Cerdán, and the Prime Minister are going to find out."

As in war, confusion in information, the more the better

The Valle-Inclan-esque spectacle we witnessed live cannot be interpreted without establishing this premise: two businessmen seeking their own profit, through disparate strategies, traveling to the underworld of blackmail to save their bottoms as best they can. From that point on, the scene of violence that ultimately erupted between the two ceases to be strange: there can only be one. But their interests are one thing, and what can be observed from the material they release through their leaks is quite another. And it is on the facts, always partial but still of general interest, that are proven in these leaks that the analysis must focus.

Back to Leire Díez, the events involving her are more worrying today than before her appearance, especially when the PSOE's attempt to distance itself from her is limited to the use of the passive voice: saying nothing. They haven't expelled her from the party; they've simply accepted her "voluntary resignation," as she insisted in her appearance. There was no other option, of course, if they wanted to spruce up the tall tale she told us yesterday about her selfless work as a journalist who wants to write a book. Madam, we've seen and heard what we've seen and heard!

The silence of the party and the government, broken only by the assertion that it's all a strategy by the PP to win in the mud what it can't win at the polls, is clearly insufficient. Leaving control of the discourse in Leire Díez's hands reinforces distrust and suspicion. Yesterday, Díez refused to take questions or clarify relevant issues, such as the meetings that a theoretically simple activist acting on her own initiative and at her own risk had with the PSOE's organizational secretary, Santos Cerdán.

We had been warned this weekend about the government's strategy once things had gotten out of hand. A counterattack with smokescreens. And mud, to use a term beloved by the executive branch. On Saturday, even three Socialist ministers gave credence to false information, already denied by the media that published it, claiming that the UCO Civil Guard officer and now the current security manager of the Madrid Health Service under Isabel Díaz Ayuso's government was fantasizing about planting a limpet mine on Pedro Sánchez. Since the ministers haven't rectified their position, the strategy is starkly visible to everyone: the executive branch actively participating in the disinformation strategy that was supposedly intended to be combated even with laws. Using the weapons criticized by the adversary. Just like in war.

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And, as in war, confusion in information, the more the better. Create the environment to force people to choose sides. With me or against me. For or against. With Dolset or with Aldama. With Leire Díez or with Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. With one or the other. Open war. And whoever's left standing should write history. The worst risk is that the rest of us are forced to believe that we must choose sides and that everything is allowed. No, it isn't. Not for the government, not for the opposition, not for any other branch of the state. So we have to judge by what we learn, even if the information is served in dribs and drabs and the providers are morally suspect. Facts, even if they're scraps. Regardless of whose shirt they claim is stained.