"Criticism is legitimate, violence is unjustifiable". Sarah Santaolalla responds thus to the attacks from the PP in a conversation published this Wednesday by 'El Plural' alongside Chema Garrido, director of that media outlet, and Hugo Pereira, director of 'ElConstitucional.es'. The three question a party using its official accounts to expose the private lives of those who criticize its leaders and defend freedom of information against personal targeting.
The debate comes after the PP of Madrid disseminated an old video of Santaolalla dancing with some friends. The publication responded to a comment by the analyst about images of Isabel Díaz Ayuso during the events of October 12, broadcast by Telemadrid. "Yesterday there was a party in the penthouse," she wrote ironically. Santaolalla explains that she had commented on public images of a regional president and questions the party's response to be retrieving a scene from her private life.
This Wednesday, the communicator has made public screenshots of death threats and messages against her family, including "Your funeral will be awesome." In the conversation, she also raises how the PP obtained the video it disseminated. "This video of my friends and me from many years ago was not on our social media. Where did they get this video?" she asks. Her concern extends to other professionals who may suffer similar attacks for being inconvenient to a political party.
Garrido believes that "we are crossing some limits that are completely unacceptable" and questions the responsibility of those who decide to publish such content under the name of a party. The director of 'El Plural' insists on the criterion that should justify its dissemination. "I don't know what the informational interest is in a person, when she was a girl, with her friends, at a town's festivities, at a street drinking party, singing a song," he points out.
Pereira places the problem in the role of the press in a democracy and rejects parties treating communicators as electoral adversaries. "Journalists have to criticize political power," he maintains, including both Pedro Sánchez's Government and the PP in opposition. The director of 'ElConstitucional.es' reminds that informing and scrutinizing those who hold public responsibilities is part of their job. "We do not run in elections, we are not on any electoral list," he emphasizes.
Santaolalla also questions that the national PP account mixes its attacks on commentators with references to corruption cases unrelated to them. The analyst mentions Afra Blanco and rejects that association with people who have no responsibility in the denounced events. "People who, I repeat, are not dedicated to politics, who do not hold a position and who are not part of any party," she recalls. Pereira shares that criticism and warns that the PP's actions affect a basic principle, that citizens can freely access information.
The communicator also defends her right to enjoy her private life without a party with friends becoming material to attack her from a political organization. "What relevant information is that?" she asks when talking about videos of journalists dancing when they were young. "I do want to vindicate dancing, having a good time, enjoying myself," she states. And she adds that she will continue to do so despite the targeting. "I am going to continue going to all the street parties in the world this summer."
