On Saturday, October 17, at six-eleven in the morning, Fernando de Haro was doing the math on the bishops’ radio station. Sumar and Podemos had let the deadline for registering coalitions pass without an agreement; the polls gave them eighteen seats together and twelve separately, and the host of La Mañana de fin de semana summed up the operation: “the left to the left of the PSOE loses six seats.” So far, arithmetic. Then came the doctrine: “It is always good news that the far right and the far left have less strength. It is always good news that center, center-right or center-left parties have more strength than the more radical parties.”
The far right had lost nothing that night.
The station’s own polls, read on air that week, gave Vox between sixty and sixty-eight deputies, up from thirty-three in 2023, and the overnight news was the divorce on the left. De Haro used it as a counterweight, like the weight the fruit seller places on the other side of the scale so the needle stays in the center (equidistance, on the bishops’ radio, is more a matter of balance than of conscience).
It was no slip. At seven-eleven he repeated it in other words: “it is good news that the extremes lose strength in Spain. The ideal would be a strong center-right party and a center-left party, and for the extremes to be weaker.” At eight-ten, a third round, now with names: that the extremes weaken “is good news because it means the center parties are strengthened,” “the PSOE and the Partido Popular.” Three hours, three times, a good minute of catechism.
In a way, his ideal is football without wingers, everything through the middle, like Ancelotti’s Milan diamond: the ball moves from PP to PSOE and from PSOE to PP through the center circle, and the flanks are left to the full-backs. The problem, De Haro himself admitted, is that Sánchez has “repositioned” the PSOE, and that if he loses and stays in charge, it “will continue to be a party that is not very center-left and very much far-left.” In other words, one of the two central midfielders has moved out to the touchline. What remains is a two-party system with only one party, which amounts to a seesaw with only one child.
The doctrine had come earlier. On Saturday the 10th, the station’s editorial had already warned against “radical” formations and cautioned that ending up like France, Italy or Germany would be “a disaster,” something this newspaper reported the following day.
On Sunday the 11th, De Haro asked political scientist Francisco José Llera, former director of the Euskobarómetro: “Does polarization benefit Vox and Sumar?” Llera replied that “polarization benefits the extremes” and that Spain has “a stroke of luck that practically no one else in Europe has,” that of still having “a strong imperfect two-party system.” On Saturday the 17th, De Haro returned the formula almost intact: “Spain, fortunately, unlike other European countries, still has two parties.” It is a kind of responsory: the editorial intones, the guest responds, the presenter repeats…
On Thursday the 15th there was a proper name. In the seven-thirty roundtable on Herrera en COPE, one of the voices at the table recalled who had opened the pensions can of worms: “Figaredo, who is not the smartest guy in Vox.” Ten seconds later, at the same table, it was admitted that “it is true that there is a sustainability problem with the pension system.” The least smart guy in Vox, apparently, had got there first.
And on Saturday, at ten-twenty-six, four hours after the first “it is always good news,” journalist Antonio Jiménez, a Saturday contributor on Cristina López Schlichting’s program, complained on the same station about other people’s vocabulary: “it amuses me that media outlets close to sanchismo define all these people as the left to the left of the PSOE when they are the far left, given how easily they label Vox as far right, when they could also define Abascal’s party as the right to the right of the PP.” He attributed to them “quite a bit of sectarianism” and “a bias that, well, is more than evident.”
He did not say which media. On his own station, the day before and on Herrera’s program, Alejandro Requeijo had placed Spain on the list of countries where “polls suggest there will be rises for the far right.” And at six-eleven that same Saturday, De Haro had said “the left to the left of the PSOE” and, less than half a minute later, “far right” (he also said “far left,” to be fair: the station’s bias is symmetrical). No one in the studio took it personally. López Schlichting thanked him, booked him for the following Saturday and moved on to Admiral Rodríguez Garat and the Moroccan ships.
The decree that obliges doctors to inform pregnant women about methods and clinics for abortion, which the Government has been rushing through since October 6, has received, on the bishops’ radio, in twelve days, seventeen seconds—the time Carlos Herrera gave it on Thursday the 15th. The extremes got more than a minute on a single Saturday morning, repetition included.
At ten-oh-five at night, during Valencia-Athletic, a commentator lamented that Valencia lacked wingers, “people who take on defenders.” It was the only time all Saturday that the bishops’ radio missed the extremes.
“COPE, the bishops’ radio” is a daily section of InfoVaticana. We listen carefully to our bishops’ radio and tell you what we find: advertising, guests, language, what is said and what is left unsaid. COPE is 75 % owned by Ábside Media, the company the Episcopal Conference created in 2020 with its own shares and those of most dioceses. Jesuits and Augustinians are also shareholders.
Everything that is broadcast on it is the responsibility, each on a personal basis, of all Spanish bishops.