I admire Carlos Alsina, undoubtedly one of Spain’s leading journalists. He conducts and produces the third most popular news radio show in the country, which also happens to be the one I have been following for years with quasi-religious zeal.
I consider him a brilliant interviewer, and hardly ever miss his daily editorial takes on current affairs. Gifted in his analyses, I find Alsina sounder and more balanced than his peers. In my view, he bypasses the national plague of partisanship better than most — if not all leading figures in his profession.
But beyond all that, I consider him a just man. Someone accepting his moral duty to state the truth –particularly crucial in journalism, as in academia– without letting himself be conditioned by any negative consequences that could predictably ensue.
I admire Arcadi Espada, undoubtedly one of Spain’s sharpest thinkers. Unlike Alsina, I do know Arcadi well, from years back. We worked side-by-side for a long stint in shared attempts, each in our capacity, to do our bit to improve Spain’s politics –Ciudadanos– and journalism –Factual–.
Alsina and Espada worked together for years in Onda Cero, the radio station, with Espada as a regular collaborator in Alsina’s program. However, during the summer Espada was summarily dismissed by Onda Cero’s executives. His sin? He had penned an article criticizing, somewhat pointedly, one of the country’s leading journalists –Antonio Ferreras– for his professional malpractice is the dissemination of fake news. The key to interpret the sequence of events, it seems, is that Antonio Ferreras is a leading figure of the larger multimedia group owner of Onda Cero.
To spice things up, I –and surely other radio listeners too– have the distinct feeling that Alsina and Espada did not have good personal chemistry cementing their more than probable mutual professional respect. All in all, it is not inconceivable that Alsina will not miss Espada and his tempestuous temperament much.
Tomorrow Alsina is scheduled to be back on air, resuming his morning radio show for a new season post the August quasi-national vacation period. In anticipation of that come back, yesterday I had a discussion with a friend who knows Alsina personally. Applying Chatham House rules, I will just say that we mapped several options on how the radio show host might address the Espada-related developments in the editorial segment of his program. They were more than one.
And yet, I can only conceive of one right way for Alsina to treat the dismissal of his former collaborator: tackling it head on, critically, drawing an iron curtain with whatever his company’s executives might prefer him to do, which would probably be to ignore the whole affair and say nothing.
Tomorrow morning will be one of those momentous occasions in which a single person can do the right thing, not the easy one, thus making himself –and all of us!– a little bit better in the process. We will be listening attentively!
