The Spanish connection

I find it amazing how fast (bad) news fly from Italy from Colombia (and, presumably, to the rest of Southamerica). We are of course talking about the kind of news related to Berlusconi, his scandals, ridiculous statements, and all the things in between. I am sure Italians will be surprised/ashamed to know that the average Colombian knows very well who SB is, is well-acquainted with his doings, and that media here is eager to inform about SB's absurd remarks and corruption scandals.

The obvious question is then: how come Berlusconi manages to receive so much press around here? The short answer is: Spain. For some reason I fail to understand, Spanish press has something against Berlusconi. Why is that? My conjecture is that SB's enemies are unable to attack him in Italy, given his strong influence on Italian media. So, anyone willing to attack SB should appeal to foreign newspapers such as El Pais to do the dirty work for them (i.e. to expose his scandals). El Pais is indeed a very good place to be updated about bad things in Italy. Whenever I don't follow some political event in Italy, I go there: they usually explain very well the historical background of each scandal and manage to put things in context. Hence, there is a strong link between Italy and Spain, in such a way that information about bad news in Italy flows easily to Spain.

The link between Spain and Southamerica is more explicit and easier to explain. In the last years we have witnessed an unfortunate invasion of Spanish media groups in Colombia. The two most important newspapers in Colombia (El Tiempo and El Espectador) either belong to Spanish media groups or have strong informative alliances with Spanish newspapers. As a consequence, in newspapers here it is very easy to find content targeted for Spanish audiences; such a content is reproduced here essentially because no translation is needed and copy-and-paste is cheap and quick. This way, if you read something in El Pais on a Sunday, it is very likely that it will appear in El Espectador (my favorite Colombian newspaper) the week after. Several times it has occurred that SB says something stupid/pseudofunny and that such declarations are not covered by, say, La Repubblica, but appear quickly in El Pais (and hence, in El Espectador).