Juan Luis Cebrián is the CEO of the Grupo Prisa, a conglomerate of media related companies such as Cadena SER, the newspaper El País and other left winged media. Curious. A person who grew up, professionally speaking, with the Movimiento, that is, under the Franco regime, and, for example, who was chief of the informative services of the only television station that was on that regime. Honesty and integrity, in terms of values, has nothing to do with money.

On the past days, Mr. Cebrián did some declarations with regards the things that are concerning him, on one side, and his position on the Grupo Prisa (on the same side, of course). Mr. Cebrián (or the media he governs) attacks Mr. Zapatero, the Spanish prime minister, and, in the same day, attacks also the right winged party, the PP. The attacks to Mr. Zapatero has nothing to do with politics; the issue is that Mr. Zapatero promoted the creation of other left winged media on Spain, and now this media has the television rights of a series of football teams on Spain, that belonged before to the Grupo Prisa. Mr. Cebrián attacks Mr. Zapatero just for this. As we can see, political criticism, on the Grupo Prisa, has always to do with money, television rights or power of any kind.

On the other hand, Mr. Cebrián praised the political figure of Mr. Gallardón, the mayor of Madrid, and, on the same way, criticizes Mrs. Aguirre, the president of the Madrid Autonomic Region, who belongs to the same party that Mr. Gallardón. The reason is clear. Mr. Gallardón is more permissive and submissive to the Grupo Prisa that Mrs. Aguirre. It is interesting to point out that the critique to Mr. Aguirre comes to the fact that, on the license adjudication process on this region, the Grupo Prisa had not the number of licenses it wanted. Thus, Mr. Cebrián said that Mrs. Aguirre is rewarding to her friends. On adjudication processes of other autonomic regions, when the result was very favorable to the Grupo Prisa (of course, on socialist governed regions), Mr. Cebrián did not said anything.

Even more. The praise to Mr. Gallardón has its origin in an affair that happened when Mr. Aznar won his first elections on Spain. Mr. Cebrián, and the Grupo Prisa, were very scared with this fact: more than twelve years of socialist governments gave them a very healthy situation in terms of radio station and television licenses, and other related things. On those thays, the Grupo Prisa (through the El País newspapers) promoted the idea of a kind of revolt on the PP, in order to put Mr. Gallardón as prime minister, substituting Mr. Aznar. Did Mr. Gallardón denied this or did he something to make this effort not legitimate? Nothing. This is a clear example of intellectual honesty and integrity. And this gives a clear hint of why the majority of the PP do not want Mr. Gallardón on top of the Popuar Party. An example of this was the attempt of Mr. Gallardón, through his second on the Madrid city government Mr. Cobo to candidate against Mrs. Aguirre on the regional congress of the PP, time ago. The voting results were clear: nintysomething to a couple.

Going back to Mr. Cebrián, what intellectual coherence one can expect from a person who was living very good on the Franco era and now criticizes it with hardness? What intellectual coherence one can expect from a person who is moved by his interests, and waves from a side to another depending on them? What intellectual coherece one can expect from him? I, personally, do not expect nothing. Just laugh, sometimes, with what he says.

The memories, the times, the past, is the inheritance of each persons and drives his or her behavior. Those who lose or forget their past, their memories, are not legitimized to give lessons of honesty or integrity, specially when their path has not been coherent. That is why, sometimes, they are looking to find their way through the investigation of the collective memories… Well, some part of them. True, Mr. Garzón.

Technorati Tags: Cebrián, Grupo Prisa, Gallardón, Aguirre, Zapatero

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.