Editorials
No Credit At All
By h.b.
Mar 24, 2007 - 11:21 AM

EDITORIAL COMMENT -

One wonders if the Partido Popular has been waiting for the excuse to attack the GRUPO PRISA media group for some time.

It’s not the first time that such an attack has happened – In 1996 the José María Aznar government tried to stop the development of Canal Satellite, the new pay per view satellite television service being established by Prisa. Aznar used his personal friendship with the Chairman of Telefónica at the time, Juan Villalonga, together with the support of the Judge Javier Gómez de Liaño, as it happens with little success.

There are some who say that it is still Aznar who is pulling the strings of the Partido Popular, and it would certainly be interesting to know if he was consulted before the party’s current leader, personally chosen by Aznar remember, Mariano Rajoy, made his statement about boycotting Grupo Prisa on Friday.

That statement was nothing short of a blackmail attempt by the leader of the main opposition party in Spain against one of the largest media groups in Spain and Latin America. The direct call for a boycott of Prisa to the group’s ‘shareholders, advertisers and clients’ shows the total lack of respect that the PP has for the freedom of business or, indeed the freedom of expression.