The Biggest Prize Of All: IB3

Ten years ago, in September 2005, IB3 began regular broadcasts in the Balearics. It had first gone on air as a television channel on 1 March of that year as a trial - the day chosen having been Balearics Day. The radio station was fully operational from that day.

To say that IB3 has enjoyed a smooth history since its launch would be wrong. Things have been anything but smooth. But in order to assess IB3's contribution, one has to divorce the politics from the actual broadcasting. The two do most definitely collide, but the impression is of a broadcaster that has achieved modest success despite the politics.

Since its inception in 2005, IB3 has had seven director-generals. They include the former vice-president of the Balearics, Antoni Gómez, who was an interim appointment in 2011, and José Manuel Ruiz, who failed in his attempt to succeed Manu Onieva as mayor of Calvia for the Partido Popular in May this year. Of the seven, five have been from the PP, including the current one, Josep Codony.

He was recently hauled up in front of parliament, ostensibly to answer questions regarding the appointment of director of television he had made without consulting the politicians: it was swiftly withdrawn. It was evident that he went to this appearance prepared to have a scrap. He would have known what was coming and it did. Alberto Jarabo (Podemos): "IB3 has been violated and perverted". David Abril (Més): "Why have you not resigned?". Silvia Cano (PSOE): "You hired a straw man ... and have caused sectarianism at IB3".

Codony hasn't resigned because, as he points out, the government hasn't come up with anyone to succeed him and also because, if he were to resign, this would create great problems for the simple fact that the government cannot come to agreement regarding his successor. He's a dead man walking, but for now he remains. In the normal (sic) course of events, he would probably have already been replaced. Change of government means changes among the ranks of senior appointments for positions at the head of government-dependent organisations, of which IB3 is one.

Making these appointments has become a poisoned chalice, with Podemos to the fore in challenging them, as is the case with Juli Fuster at the health service. IB3, though, is arguably the greatest prize when it comes to what is a political appointment. A public broadcaster, it is the very public face of government, which brings the implication of political interference.

With five of the seven director-generals having been from the PP, who created IB3 under the second Matas administration, the parties of the left now sense their chance to definitively stamp their mark on the broadcaster. Of the two other director-generals, one was from the old Unió Mallorquina, while the other, Pedro Terrassa, was from PSOE. For a period of some twelve months, there was a director-general from a left-leaning party. The left now want to redress this imbalance.

Codony has denied that there was interference from the PP while it was still in government. He contrasts this with how things now are. The political involvement extends, he says, to the choice of films that IB3 has to show. The commandment for this has come from Esperança Camps, the Més minister for transparency, participation and culture. Hers was an unusual ministerial appointment in that she had no direct political background, other than political views. Rather than a politician per se, she was and is an author and a television journalist. The suspicion, one that Codony has expressed, is that Camps could be his successor.

Though Codony says otherwise, there was interference from the PP, and it manifested itself in different ways. Groups like the environmentalists GOB were given reduced exposure, while there was the instruction to use the Mallorquín "the" instead of the Catalan "the" in news reports (something that has now been reversed). This interference is continuing, and Codony, who the left would be keen to see gone before the general election and all the reporting that this will entail, will have been the latest in the line of discontinuity at the head of IB3. 

The broadcaster has had enormous amounts of money lavished on it, and it has been said to be the second most expensive regional public broadcaster in Spain. Given the expenditure, it should be performing well. A typical audience share of six to seven per cent is what it attains. At least its finances are now in better shape, Codony saying that it has been operating without a deficit for three years.

Despite the politics, it is not doing badly, but might it do better were it not constantly subject to interference? It is an important service, but the politicians are failing it and so failing also the public. The interference won't end though. It's too much of a prize.

Time To Turn Off The TV?: IB3

In Valencia at the end of last week, several thousand people demonstrated against a regional government announcement that the government-funded RTVV (Radio Televisión Valenciana) was to close. The decision to shut the broadcaster down was one taken, according to the government, because of a need to choose between it and spend on health and education. Those calling for the decision to be reconsidered argue the closure constitutes an attack on democracy and on the Valencian economy; apart from those at the broadcaster who will lose their jobs, over 100 media and production companies employing some 3,000 people may well be forced to close as well.


In the Balearics, there were protests two years ago when the decision was taken to close TV Mallorca. There were similar objections to those now being made in Valencia. Among them were claims that Mallorca's audiovisual industry would be hit hard and that some 2,000 employees could find themselves at risk of losing their jobs. The final transmission was in December 2011 and a year later a further decision by the Council of Mallorca, which had been the body that had closed TV Mallorca, was greeted as representing a potentially fatal blow to the local AV industry; this was the decision to close the Mallorca Film Commission.

The AV industry also criticised cuts to budgets at IB3, the other Mallorca government-funded broadcaster. When these cuts were added to the closure of TV Mallorca and of the film commission, they together amounted to a major threat to an industry which, in no small part, has been at the forefront of a drive towards a stronger technology-based economy on the island.

While lack of funding has been used as the justification for closure, there has also been a heavy dose of politics. TV Mallorca, a company created by the then Unió Mallorquina-led Council of Mallorca, received backing from organisations such as GOB, the environmental group, and the OCB, the promoters of Catalan culture, when the by now Partido Popular-led Council took its decision to close the station. IB3, in the meantime, has become a broadcaster firmly under the control of the PP. The likes of GOB, so it has been alleged, are all but barred, while there was criticism of IB3's lack of coverage of the massive demonstration against the regional government's trilingual teaching policy.

Against a background of an inference that IB3 is being used as a government mouthpiece, there now comes a revelation as to quite how much IB3 has been costing. Since it was launched by the Jaume Matas PP government in 2005, it is said to have cost 650 million euros. Though its budget has been cut over the past four years, in 2012 it still received funding of almost 45 million euros (roughly speaking, public funds amount to 95% of its operating revenue). Based on the cost per head of population, IB3 is the second most expensive regional broadcaster in Spain.

The 2012 budget did, however, have to be supplemented. Had it not been, IB3 might have been forced to shut down. And it would appear that ever since its launch, the initial annual budgets have always been supplemented, occasionally in an astronomical fashion. Meantime, the total of 650 million euros has contributed to sustaining a broadcaster which attracts slightly less than 6% of audience share. By comparison, for example, TV3 in Catalonia has a 13.6% audience share, one pulled from a vastly greater population. Valencia's Channel 9 (RTVV) has a lower share, but it also has a larger population to draw on.

Local broadcasting should, in theory, be a "good thing". It is a very good thing if the funds it receives from government and taxpayers then translate into new businesses, more jobs and technological innovation. It is also a very good thing if it advances local culture and is a force for social good. But it is not a very good thing if it is viewed by comparatively small audiences, costs a fortune and becomes a political tool. If IB3 were to close tomorrow, few people, other than those whose jobs depend on it, would do much weeping.

IB3 has also been dogged with suspicions. Those to do with some of that funding. Little more than three years into its existence, the police had started to snoop around, asking questions about payments for studio sets which were some 20% higher than tenders from companies which had missed out.

The regional government, aware of the protests in Valencia, has said that it has no intention of following Valencia's lead in closing IB3. There again, if it is serving a useful purpose for the government, then why would it? And why would it privatise IB3, as has been suggested, if privatisation meant broadcaster independence? But then who would want to buy it? 6% audience share? No thanks.

The Persecution Of Baltasar Garzón

It takes something for a judge to be the subject of a film or a TV show. Baltasar Garzón is neither an eccentric figure of the Wild West (Judge Roy Bean) nor a fictitious and unrealistic character such as Judge John Deed. He is grounded and real. He is grounded in more than just one sense. Level-headed, he has also been suspended since last May, while awaiting trial on an allegation of "prevaricación", which is a Spanish legal concept which isn't really as it sounds; it can be taken to mean misconduct in office or possibly perverting the course of justice.

The documentary film, "Listening to Judge Garzón", is more than simply a look at his life and times and his fears arising out of his suspension. It is also representative of the support Garzón has from the liberal arts. A week ago, in Madrid, there was a demonstration, one by artists, unionists and politicians, calling for an end to the "persecution" of Garzón. Under the banner "truth, justice and reparation", the demonstration rejected the attempted criminalisation of Garzón and criticised the inaction of the government and tribunals.

Garzón, who, by appearance, has something of a chubby Sven-Goran Eriksson about him but who has not been guilty of Sven's peccadilloes or indeed those of Judge John Deed, is far from uncontroversial. To call him a judge is misleading, in English terms. He is an investigator, more than he is an arbiter. It is through the nature of his investigations that he has aroused controversy and the attentions of opponents as diverse as the Spanish right wing and the US Government.

The Spanish legal system allows for investigations that go beyond national jurisdiction. Consequently, Garzón has brushed up against the American authorities for seeking to pursue torture allegations and Henry Kissinger. But it was one investigation in particular, one in Spain, that brought about his suspension. It was that of calling for exhumation of graves and for charges of crimes against humanity related to incidents during and after the Civil War.

Garzón, so goes the allegation, exceeded his authority in ordering this investigation. It was said to go against the amnesty that was granted after Franco's death, one that, until relatively recently and the introduction of the law of historic memory which was designed to strip Spain of vestiges of the Franco era, had caused a kind of collusive, national amnesia.

The argument that the investigation contravened the amnesty is dubious. Its drafting was intended to clear those who had been imprisoned by the Franco regime; not the Francoists and Francoist judges who had put them into prison. Amnesia and selective memory have surrounded its actual terms ever since. The selectivity has been one of interpreting the amnesty to suit purposes.

The investigation was itself suspended. But this didn't stop Garzón being indicted. And the impulse for his being so has widely and correctly been seen as one that has come from the right. The Partido Popular has been accused of willing his neutering, while the ones to actually file a lawsuit were from a right-wing trade union called Manos Limpias ("clean hands"). Other hands involved with bringing Garzón to trial were those of the Falange.

It is the dark forces of the extreme right that hang over the Garzón affair. Though Garzón could well be accused of courting his own publicity and seeking self-aggrandisement, the case reveals much of what lurks beneath the surface in Spanish society and of the dichotomy between liberalism and the pursuit of justice and a reactionary neo-Francoism.

It also reveals much about the politicisation and partiality of the legal system. Garzón is not completely immune to charges of political bias; he is a member of the PSOE socialist party. But one of the judges selected to investigate the charge against Garzón contributes to a magazine with pro-Franco sympathies. Last year, more than 1500 judges issued a declaration condemning the influence of political parties in the legal process.

It is against this background that you have the current situation in Mallorca in which two parties, the now former Unió Mallorquina and the Partido Popular (neither to the left of the political spectrum), have been levelling allegations of political interference and judge and prosecutor bias in cases of corruption. The PP's Balearics leader, José Bauzá, has come out and said that "cases of supposed corruption" directed at the party have been pursued with the "clear agreement and rigour" of the judiciary.

Whatever the truth or not of bias and interference, from either left or right of the political spectrum, there is undeniably an underlying politicisation, and it is one that threatens an undermining of what should be an independent institution - the judiciary. More than this, however, and as the Garzón affair exposes, influences on the legal system go to the centre of Spain's democratic institutions and to a battle for the country's heart and soul. If Garzón is indeed being persecuted - and he is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights - then it is worrying. And not just for Garzón.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.