Albert Rivera is desperate. Good fortune has passed him by once again, and the brief period that the Ciudadanos (Cs) party leader had when everything in Spanish politics went his way ended a few months ago when Pedro Sánchez won a vote of no-confidence and became the new prime minister. And thus, Rivera now needs to convert every public appearance he makes into a conflict. There is little left of that once-fresh politician, who could have embodied a new right, called himself a liberal, and was opening a way in Spanish politics with the help of the private television networks' supply of prime time coverage in exchange for mounting the most defamatory, injurious and adulterated campaign ever seen against Catalan nationalist politics. Today he is a bitter politician, whose only discourse consists of invoking a Spanish nationalism that is rancid and sometimes even extremist, with an appeal to hate, confrontation and little more as its political rallying points.
The embarrassing scene that Rivera staged on Friday on Els Matins, a morning talk show on the Catalan public television channel TV3, directed and presented by journalist Lídia Heredia, in which the Cs leader arrived with a premeditated script, aiming to vandalise the interview and denigrate the Catalan public broadcaster and its professionals, is inadmissible for any politician who claims to be responsible, respectful of democracy and at least slightly inclined to support the freedom of expression. It is not a question of Rivera having criticised the TV channel, something which he and anyone else has every right to do. As long as some actual evidence can be presented, that is, and more so when the accuser has some public responsibility. But to make the leap into slander he must be very desperate. To confront a journalist, almost demanding that she ask him certain questions, he must be very desperate. To describe Catalonia's Mossos police as "political police", to refer to TV3 as a "separatist propaganda apparatus" and to convert an interview on the Catalan public broadcaster into an opportunity to make an ad for the Spanish TV networks, he must be very desperate.
Rivera began his political career wanting to be an Adolfo Suárez, a reformist figure, but the leader with whom he can best be compared today is Donald Trump. With one difference: he is just as slanderous as Trump is of journalists, but the response of the Spanish media companies - not all but the vast majority - is not to denounce him as they do in the United States, but rather to nourish him and protect him in his belligerent attitude. Though it won't make any difference, it's nevertheless time to let him know, in the strongest terms possible, that his behaviour has become unacceptable. To let him know that the verbal violence he practices will, we hope, have little effect on a mature and democratic society such as that of Catalonia, which has responded calmly to the increasing escalation of extremist provocations on the streets. And that if the totality of his political action consists only of removing yellow ribbons, discrediting the Mossos, slandering TV3, trying to make Catalan into a marginal language and demanding a new application of article 155 in order create some breathing space for himself, then that's a poor harvest to take to market. Too poor.