Many of you will have seen this already, but for those that haven’t, it’s worth noting a) just how a politician shouldn’t behave in pubic and b) the level of censorship employed on the PP-controlled TeleMadrid.
The first minute of the video shows TeleMadrid’s edited down version of Madrid President Esperanza Aguirre’s recent visit to a local hospital.
Jump to 1 minute 12 seconds to see the footage the channel was ordered not to show, where La Espe lost her cool …
hellothere
15 Jun 08 at 9:59 am
Classy lady, with her chewing gum…
And she is laughing at them? This woman has no shame.
Anyone who has had to use the overcrowded understaffed Sanidad Pública hospitals in Madrid, or has had to wait 6 months to get to see a specialist and then another 6 months to have an analysis done at the hospital (true story) will know what I mean.
Sanidad Pública in Madrid in an embarrassment.
But of course, this does not affect Lady Espe, as she does not use these services…
Graeme
15 Jun 08 at 11:01 am
I have read somewhere that a sizeable percentage of the employees of TeleMAguirre is effectively left sitting around doing nothing – because more politically loyal people have been recruited to do their jobs. When they are not singing Espe’s praises Madrileños are subjected to endless repeats of the same old films, most of the money allocated to the channel was spent on a helicopter to give better coverage of anti-Zapatero demonstrations.
Katie
15 Jun 08 at 12:48 pm
Qué asco!
Bill
15 Jun 08 at 1:13 pm
For another example of what this woman is capable of, take a look at a map of the existing/planned AVE high speed train network for Spain here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HighSpeedSpain-February2008.png
You’ll see it connecting all the main Spanish cities and…Guadalajara!? Yes there is a stop next to an unknown village called Yerbes in the Comunidad de Madrid.
Don’t worry though, they plan to build thousands of houses there, and it’s sure to go ahead because most of the land just happens to be owned by Aguirre’s husband.
Beckett
15 Jun 08 at 1:34 pm
Espe has got the whole Marie Antoninette “let them eat cake” thing down pat.
Edith
15 Jun 08 at 5:38 pm
That’s why I don’t like most politicians – they are liars and opportunists who can’t be trusted.
Andrew
15 Jun 08 at 5:50 pm
To paraphrase my co-worker: “She’s a bi***. I hate her, everyone hates her, she just slept her way to the top”. That was a reaction just from me asking who she was!! lol..
I would like to see a high-speed link between Madrid and Granada. It currently takes around 4 hours, the same as the bus, yet twice the price.
faemino
15 Jun 08 at 11:09 pm
This woman is dangerous. I really mean it.
Hellothere is totally right, public services in Madrid are a shame, much worse than those of the other cities in Spain I have lived in. But apparently, most madrileños seem to be happy with her, with TeleAguirre and with the 3rd world services they get. They get what they deserve, they keep on voting her. Most madrileños don’t know better, they have never lived in any other city.
What really scares me is that this woman could be the next president of the PP and perhaps the next president of Spain.
tryk
15 Jun 08 at 11:48 pm
Esperanza, no hagas caso de aquellos que te desprecian. A algunos se les olvida que Esperanza tuvo más del 50% de los votos en las elecciones autonómicas
faemino
15 Jun 08 at 11:55 pm
A mi no se me olvida tryk, cada mañana cuando me subo al Metro me acuerdo mucho de Esperanza Aguirre.
Christine Gilbert
16 Jun 08 at 1:49 am
I don’t really understand what she’s doing, is she antagonizing the protesters? Can you hear what she is saying?
Ray
16 Jun 08 at 5:05 am
@Christine Gilbert: I also don’t understand what is happening in this video. I see a woman (I assume must be Aguirre) get yelled at by a bunch of other people, and she seems to try to talk to a few of them, but gives up and laughs it off as she walks away.
I have to admit that I don’t get Spanish politics, and I don’t understand the REAL differences between one political party and the next.
But, I know one thing, (Edith got it right) politicians will do whatever the people who vote for them allow them to get away with. This lady looks like a typical politician, except for the not-really-looking-100%-professional-onscreen bit. The gum? was not flattering, either.
I always thought TV stations had to buy their broadcast bandwith from the people (the government.)
Aren’t there like a ton of commercials on TeleMadrid? I thought that was how television networks were ran.
Graeme
16 Jun 08 at 8:45 am
TeleMadrid is the public channel for the autonomous region of Madrid, and therefore comes under direct political control of the regional government who appoint it’s executives. It carries advertising but in the end it is paid for out of public funds. Under Aguirre it has been transformed into a propaganda unit that would make those behind Chinese state tv a bit jealous. Even Gallardón, the mayor of Madrid, hardly features on the channel despite belonging to the same party – Espe doesn’t like him. It’s a little ironic, although not that surprising, that someone who makes such a big issue of her attachment to free market principle uses a publicly funded TV channel as her main platform.
Ben
16 Jun 08 at 10:09 am
@Christine and Ray: Maybe this needs a bit more back story on Espe to really appreciate this video. She is somewhat arrogant lets say, and to see her so aggressively getting into the faces of the protesters while on an official visit, all the while chewing gum and laughing, does not seem becoming of the President of a major automonous region. Combined with the censorship issue, I thought it was of interest, but perhaps more to those that live in Madrid and see a lot of her.
Ben
16 Jun 08 at 10:10 am
p.s. that and the fact that, as mentioned above, she seriously aspires to being president of Spain, and could even get there considering the influence she has…
Edith
16 Jun 08 at 10:34 am
She’s visiting a cancer unit, for pete’s sake – you’d expect a little bit more respect for the patients. In a way, she reminds me of Margaret Thatcher who used to say that public transport was for losers and paupers. Yes, ‘let them eat cake’ indeed…
Ben
16 Jun 08 at 10:46 am
@Edith – yes, I think the Thatcher similarities don’t end there… another Iron Lady I fear…
bill
16 Jun 08 at 11:17 am
@Ben, Edith – what similarities with Thatcher are you talking about?
If Aguirre happened to be a man, would you still be making those comparisons?
Stephen
16 Jun 08 at 12:12 pm
The planned high-speed train is going to stop in the middle of nowhere where Aguirre’s husband owns a lot of land?
Did Aguirre have a lot of influence on the route of the line? If so, that becoming public knowledge would finish any politician in the UK. When are the next elections the lady might stand in? Surely the Spanish will punish her at the ballot box. Yes?
Edith
16 Jun 08 at 1:10 pm
@ Bill,
I was referring to the lack of empathic thinking which both persons seem to have in common. And yes, I would have made the same comments if Aguirre had been a man.
bill
16 Jun 08 at 1:20 pm
@Stephen – that seems to be the case.
As far as I can tell, Yebes is/was a pueblo with a population of a few hundred. About 9000 homes are due to be built there in a new town called Valdeluz, on or around land owned by Aguirre’s husband and his family. I suspect a cercanias line is due to be built there as well.
One can only speculate as to how much influence Aguirre had on the decision to build a station there (from the map it actually appears outside the Comunidad de Madrid), but rest assured this woman is extremely powerful and has a lot of influence. This information was in the public domain before the last election and Aguirre still won it easily.
To me it seems this kind of behaviour is so common amongst those in Spain who have money and influence, that most Spanish seem resigned to the fact that it goes on, or feel they can’t do much about it. It’s relatively rare for a Spanish politician to resign due to what might be considered a scandal in the UK. The lack of pressure from the media doesn’t help either.
cindy
16 Jun 08 at 1:57 pm
stephen:
im not that political, but i see that the people here vote for the party not the person. the party picks the person? my political views are really on the fence, but i dont see so many spanish like me. they are either very one way or the other. or so it seems to me. so how could the mostly PP population of madrid get her out?
Stephen
16 Jun 08 at 2:35 pm
@ Cindy,
I didn’t know that Madrid was so dominated by the PP. Still, couldn’t Aguirre be challenged from a politician from within her own party? Politicians are quick to exploit any weakness in their own side as well as in their opponents.
bill
16 Jun 08 at 3:34 pm
@Stephen – Aguirre is not weak within the PP, so no challenge is imminent. She could even be the next leader.
Perhaps the best known rival to Aguirre within the PP is the mayor of Madrid, Gallardon, who is generally considered to be more moderate. They do not get on. Even though he has twice been elected Mayor of Madrid, he was still denied the right to stand as a PP candidate in the recent general election by Rajoy. At the time he hinted heavily that he thought it was Aguirre’s influence at work. Besides, nobody within the PP will challenge her while she keeps getting re-elected.
richardksa
16 Jun 08 at 4:33 pm
@Andrew. Within my acquaintences there are two that know the lady. One socially, the other works for her. Both have great respect for her and consider her the best thing for the communidad. Both would consider the sleeping to the top” as a slander. The fact that she come from money and married more should not influence voters opinions. In my opinion the communidad is well run and well led.
She sems to be respected internationally as well. Somehow she is a Dame of the British Empire!!
Ben
16 Jun 08 at 4:36 pm
I would say it was money and family rather than sex that got her to the top… of course she may just be a talented politician
bill
16 Jun 08 at 5:07 pm
Aguirre could be running the comunidad perfectly well as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not too bothered about how she got there as long as she was elected. However I’m pretty sick of the propaganda I get fed on Telemadrid, which presents Madrid as some psuedo-utopia where everything runs smoothly and nothing ever goes wrong. I’d also like to know how they managed to place an AVE stop in the middle of nowhere, next to land owned by her family, and with planning permission to build 9000 homes!
Pepino
16 Jun 08 at 5:08 pm
If Telemadrid is central in her big popularity push, then that might be all well and good within Madrid itself, but does the PP have such control over TV channels outside of the capital? (I have no idea who controls what on TV in Spain). I’m thinking if Espe one day soon-ish goes for the Presidency, she’ll need to rely on more than just the ability to manipulate the local media to win over the seemingly always crucial “undecideds”, and broaden her appeal to suit the rest of the country too.
ValenciaSon
16 Jun 08 at 5:21 pm
Couldn’t this video be used by her opponents to dismantle any of Espe’s future political endeavor?
Graeme
16 Jun 08 at 5:39 pm
It’s worth remembering how Espe got elected as Madrid president in the first place. She actually lost the first election but because two of the PSOE members elected refused to vote in favour of a left wing coalition she got another bite at the cherry and won the re-run election. We still don’t know excactly what happened but the whole affair was very suspicious and the chief prosecutor in Madrid (who is now justice minister) said that he was ordered not to investigate the case. There was some evidence linking the two rebels to construction interests close to the PP but the full story has never emerged. If that hadn’t happened probably no one would even remember who Esperanza Aguirre was, it’s those little details that make the difference in politics.
Tom
16 Jun 08 at 6:31 pm
@richardksa “She sems to be respected internationally as well. Somehow she is a Dame of the British Empire!!” Haha well that really proves it then!
Tell me, what did you make of the video? Doesn’t she come out of it rather poorly? Rather than relying on the say-so of two people who may well be part of her cabal, I ask you to judge her actions in the video footage and tell me that she comes out of it looking either nice or, for that matter, presidential.
Also – does anyone know why she was given this ridiculous ‘knighthood’ anyway? I can’t any info about it.
Urgellenk
16 Jun 08 at 7:04 pm
The Yebes affaire happened long before Mrs Aguirre was even candidate to the Presidency of Madrid Autonomous Region. At the time, she was the Minister of Culture in Aznar’s Cabinet. The initial project did not contemplate any stop for the AVE in Guadalajara. It was the PSOE controlled region of Castilla-La Mancha who insisted in having a stop there. As, by the time the government accepted the requirements of Castilla-La Mancha, the line was scheduled to run outside of the city, the station had also to be outside of Guadalajara, on the land owned by the family of Aguirre’s husband. Although there has been a lot of speculation, there has been no way to prove any implication of Mrs. Aguirre in that affaire. In addition, PP supporters have proved to be very indulgent towards politicians suspected of corruption. Leftist politicians, on the other hand, could count on no mercy, sometimes even regardless of the veracity of the corruption accusations.
Madrid has been a PP stronghold for many years now and, in spite of the scandals and unexplained affaires she has been involved in, Mrs Aguirre has managed to gain more support, even in traditionally leftist regions, like some of the towns in the industrial outlying areas of Madrid.
Seen from Madrid, it might look like Mrs Aguirre is very powerful and influential in the PP. However, her support comes strictly from some of the most outspoken far-right media (El Mundo and Libertad Digital), who share her liberal -in the European sense- views, her strong opposition to any kind of negotiation with ETA, and her vision of a Spain with less powers for the regions and more control from Madrid.
During Zapatero’s first term, Aguirre and her supporting media group have dominated the political agenda of the PP but the last elections have shown that the gains in Madrid, Valencia and Murcia have come at the cost of a virtually political death in Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the PSOE didn’t need to do much more than scaring voters by showing pictures of Aguirre, Acebes and Zaplana to get an overwhelming victory. Acebes and Zaplana are gone and the PP knows they need a more centered candidate if they want to have a chance next time. Aguirre simply does not have that profile.
John Ross
16 Jun 08 at 7:17 pm
This is going to sound weird, me speaking up for Espe, but I do hope she goes for the PP leadership and I hope she gets it. She has the support of the fanatical right, and if the PP goes more right-wing that could well make them unelectable. Fine by me.
@Graeme
You’re underestimating your enemy. She has been a minister, senator and President of the Senate and euro-MP. She is totally unbearable, but you can’t deny her curriculum.
@richardska
The Comunidad de Madrid is a disaster. It has done nothing for the people of the region since Espe bribed her way into the presidency. El País ran a story the other day about how 4 out of 5 proposals debated in the assembly are attacks on the government of Spain. The health system has been seriously and systematically undermined beginning with the Severo Ochoa affair (and continuing with a spate of unnecessary hospitals being built in order to channel money out of the public sector into the private and deplete perfectly good ones of its doctors. Education has been handed over to Opus Dei. The Sierra de Guadarrama National Park has been subverted to serve the ends of property speculators and construction companies. Achievements – zero, I can’t think of a single thing that the Comunidad has done right in the last five years.
hf
16 Jun 08 at 11:03 pm
Sounds like TeleMadrid is as bad as Canal Nou
Tom
17 Jun 08 at 8:47 am
@John – hmmm your calculation that a more right-wing PP can’t be elected sounds pretty risky to me. I mean: can you imagine what would happen if that woman became Presidente del Gobierno? We’d all be fleeing for sunnier climes… like England!
bill
17 Jun 08 at 9:16 am
@Urgellenk – thanks for the info.
Stephen
17 Jun 08 at 1:08 pm
“Education has been handed over to Opus Dei. ” – John Ross
Ugh.
I read that the government is pledged to remove the influence of the church from education. So I’m guessing there’ll be some more fireworks in the next few years between Aguirre and the guv.
Bill
24 Jun 08 at 12:05 am
Just seen that Aguirre’s arch rival Gallardon has been promoted to the executive of the PP. She doesn’t appear to be too happy about it either. Will her gum chewing antics prove to be the beginning of her downfall?
Asustao
29 May 09 at 3:41 am
In my opinion she represents the populism the caciquismo, the darker ages of our history. I am really afraid of this lady, she lacks morals, ethics and democratic manners. If Aguirre happened to be a man I would compare her to some guy at Italy or Venezuela