Poster boy

On Monday morning, a 253-square-metre poster was plastered onto scaffolding on a building opposite the Spanish parliament in Madrid. It featured an image of Pedro Sánchez, tweaked to make the Socialist leader look like mafia boss Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather, next to the word 'Corrupt'. The banner referenced several corruption investigations, including the one involving Sánchez's wife over which he threatened to resign last April. Less than 24 hours later, the poster had been removed, after the Socialists successfully filed a defamation charge with a court.

The Socialists, I suppose, had a point. It could be argued that the poster implied that Sánchez himself is corrupt, and there is no evidence to suggest that that's true. The cases against his wife, Begoña Gomez, and brother David - a conductor who resigned as Badajoz's regional music director in February, amid suspicions that the post was created specifically for him - are weak. Both cases have been filed by Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a civic organisation founded in 1995 by a lawyer with links to the Francoist right.

Still, there was something both sinister and petty about the speed with which the banner was removed. The government of a mature, robust democracy should be able to deal with the public presence of provocative posters, especially ones that are fixed with all the permits in place, as this one reportedly was.

The banner was the work of HazteOir, (Make Yourself Heard) - a Catholic, right-wing organisation with a flair for eye-catching campaigns. In 2023, it was fined 20,000 euros for driving a bus around Barcelona emblazoned with slogans that the Catalan government deemed "transphobic". HazteOir was also responsible for a bus campaign in Madrid in 2017, when the vehicle bore the apparently contentious assertions that "boys have penises" and "girls have vulvas". Madrid's government - then under the leadership of leftist mayor Manuela Carmena - called it the "bus of shame" and had it hauled off the streets.

The judge who ended Sánchez's brief career as a poster-boy for political corruption was Arturo Zamarriego Fernández, some of whose previous rulings have also raised concerns about the suppression of free speech. Noting its location in front of the Spanish parliament, Fernández stated that the banner "exceeded acceptable limits of free speech".

Whatever those boundaries are, they clearly don't exist in the building opposite that on which the poster was hung. Sánchez and his opponents routinely use corruption allegations as political weapons, choosing to spray each other with insults rather than debate policy. It should also be noted that the poster referenced the Koldo case, which does directly affect the government. Stating (or implying) that Koldo looks bad for Sánchez is not something that should incite judicial intervention - much like biologically accurate references to male and female genitalia.