Juan Villoro
In the ultimate fulfillment of her tireless work, Victoria Prego died on Labor Day. At 75, the Spanish journalist had worked as a correspondent in London, on numerous television forums, and as assistant director of El Mundo. However, her main endeavor was La transición (The Transition), a 13-episode series premiered in 1995. Her voice narrated with epic accuracy the end of Franco’s dictatorship and the return of Spanish democracy.
When the series aired in Mexico it had the impact of a desirable mirror, an example of what could once happen in the country of the One Party System.
In 1977, from the Ministry of the Interior, Jesús Reyes Heroles convened the discussions for Political Reform. The national imperative at that time was the conquest of a real democracy. This yearning, shared by very diverse sectors, awakened illusions that denied each other. Hope depended less on achieving the abstract “common good” than on the very concrete interests of each group. Those of us on the left thought that when there were free elections, the future could only be progressive; on the contrary, those who repudiated the PRI as “socialistic” and statist judged that democracy would bring liberal honesty. Wishes prevailed over arguments: the future would be worthwhile if our rooster won.
In that context, journalism faced the same dilemma as today: to be a means of information or an organ of propaganda. The greatest virtue of the series La transición would only be appreciated from a distance. In 1995 it captivated by the hypnotic power of peaceful change: the long night of dictatorship gave way to modern free choice. Today another aspect is striking: Spain underwent a critical transformation; it was able to value itself differently.
A couple of years ago, I participated with Fernando Savater in a dialogue before the new students of the Law School of the UNAM. I took the opportunity to ask him what he appreciated most in jurisprudence: “The pride of being persuaded”, he answered. The prosecutor and the defense aspire to convince. This exercise offers an ethical lesson to an era of quick certainties, refractory to other people’s ideas, and subject to the binary condition of social networks.
The transition narrated the historic moment in which millions of Spaniards changed their minds. This was possible because the process was accompanied by a new journalism, more committed to information than to ideology and willing to demonstrate that its sustenance is incontrovertible data.
It is worth remembering this on the eve of the Mexican elections, which are marked by disqualifications. One candidate is branded as corrupt, and the other as corrupt; one is accused of submitting to the manipulation of powerful forces, and the other as well, and so on and so forth.
For years, we have been confusing democracy with fulfilling our passions. Alejandro Rossi reflects on this in his recently published Diary. On July 15, 1988, he wrote about the electoral fraud committed against Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas: “Many intellectuals -Paz among them- support democracy on the assumption that the left would hardly benefit from this process. The bet was that democratization would result in the strengthening of the PAN. Again: neoliberal government and PAN as a bipartisan assumption. I wonder: would they have insisted so much on the democratization of the PRI and the country if they had known that the greatest beneficiary would be the left? Now, they find themselves in need to support the PRI, the new dam against the left. On the phone, Octavio told me the other day: ‘The danger is that the PRI will collapse’. When the election in Chihuahua took place, everyone shouted: ‘Fraud! Now, they are the first ones interested in legitimizing the elections. Paradoxes of ideology!”. The same can be said of sectors of the left that have judged the PAN’s triumphs as “defeats of democracy”, forgetting that free elections allow the adversary to win, no matter how despicable he may be.
Everything indicates that on June 2, prejudices will once again overcome reasons. Journalism has been an accomplice of this distortion. Its future depends, as Victoria Prego demonstrated, on returning to the only legitimate field: the elusive search for truth.
This piece was published in Spanish by Reforma on May 3, 2024
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