News in the World - Part II

Where there are little inaccuracies, there will be big inaccuracies.

A sad tribute to Antonio Muñoz Molina's essay "In Francoland."

De Morgen remains weird in its coverage of Spain.  Yesterday I thought it was perhaps a misunderstanding that they reported that Carles Puigdemont had sent his wife and children out of the country for safety after being fired as President of the Generalitat when there were Reuters photos of Puigdemont and his wife walking together in Girona.  Today they have another article, fairly obviously a plant from their "secretary for asylum and immigration" the right-wing Theo van Francken, who says in the headline that it is "not unrealistic for Puigdemont to claim asylum in Belgium":  "Puigdemont die asiel aanvraagt in Belgie?  Niet onrealistisch."  The article explains that as a potential "political prisoner" Belgium could grant Puigdemont asylum if it were impossible for him to obtain a fair trial in Madrid.  The story is from 20:57 on October 28.

Meanwhile, on the same day, Spain's (more or less left-wing) news channel La Sexta reported that a spokesman for the Madrid government had officially confirmed that Puigdemont was welcome to stand for elections on December 21, as were other ministers who had been removed from their posts:  "Méndez de Vigo: Sería bueno que el Señor Puigdemont se presentara a las elecciones."

Once again we have an inconsistency, this time more serious than the location of a politician's wife.



It may well be that the Catalans have the Spanish tic of refusing to run in elections they think they might lose and then proclaiming them "illegitimate."  (After all, Puigdemont's coalition proclaimed a Catalan republic with 70 votes in favor, 10, against, 3 abstentions....and something like 50 deputies from three parties who refused to attend the vote and weren't present.)  But refusing to run because a win isn't guaranteed isn't quite the same as being a political prisoner, and if the Spanish government is in fact urging Puigdemont and his party to run in the upcoming elections it seems unlikely that they're about to arrest him.

So why is De Morgen still clinging to a narrative of a bold freedom fighter in a dictatorship?  Some of the answer may be found in Antonio Muñoz Molina's sad and moving essay "In Francoland."  (Here's a link to the Spanish original.  This talented and unquestionably anti-franquista author was called a "troll" for his pains by a lazy New Yorker author who preferred cliches to an articulate Spaniard with experience of living in Manhattan.)  Some of De Morgen's erroneous coverage may just be laziness, and an inability of their columnists to understand Spanish, and thus to follow local news unless translated into English or French and thus an over reliance on press releases.

Or it could be a more sinister manipulation of the Belgian press.  Prior to his current heroic willingness to grant asylum to a political figure who is welcome to run for office in a stable more-or-less democracy, Belgian minister Theo van Francken was better known for his stubborn refusal to grant asylum to a Syrian family of four, because they had filled out their application giving an address in Lebanon (where they were already refugees), and because the father had returned briefly to Syria to settle affairs there, which showed first of all that if they had gone back to Syria then they weren't really fleeing and secondly that even if they were fleeing they already had a home in Lebanon and didn't need to come to Belgium.  Belgians revolted by van Francken's staggering hypocrisy and often barely-concealed racism now can be proud of their minister for asylum and immigration -- because after all he (alone among all European countries) has bravely offered to face down what Muñoz Molina wryly calls "Francoland" and give asylum to a political prisoner who is fighting for his people.  It's a wonderful press release, and I'll bet the De Morgen correspondent was happy to reprint something with such high drama, and burnish the honorable staat-secretaris image a bit.  Except Francoland exists mostly in nostalgic memory, and Puigdemont isn't a prisoner nor likely to become one and I strongly suspect the EU has strong opinions about extradition between member states who have all signed on to the same convention of human rights.

It is perhaps troubling that coverage of national issues runs so much on stereotypes.  If nothing else, it explains why even Europeans who are generally casually anti-American are shocked over and over again by stories about current immigration policy in the US.  It's not that the U.S. history of exclusion and discrimination against successive waves of immigrants isn't there, and it's not even that Europeans aren't willing to ascribe hypocrisy and villainy to the US.  It's that Europeans "know" that the U.S. is a land of immigrants the same way they "know" about Francoland.  Any evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.