Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has inaugurated a think tank to combat “hoaxes” in the media, particularly aimed at alleged “far-right” media.
In his speech launching the Avanza Foundation on Wednesday, Sánchez said the Socialist Party-linked organization would “contribute to dismantling narratives based on hoaxes and falsehoods.”
Senior staff from his party attended the event, including several regional ministers and general secretaries.
Sánchez also said that Avanza would function as an “open space” for all progressive ideas, aiming to include a wide range of progressive ideas and organizations beyond his governing Socialist Party. It would not be like “other closed thought tanks with preset ideas.”
Sánchez admitted that progressives currently lack answers and strategy in the face of the advance of what he called “the extreme right” in Spanish and European politics. Progressives, he said, need to come up with “recipes” to confront the “lies,” that he claims the Right spreads “with impunity.”
In a similar vein, the foundation’s president Manuel Escudero explained that one of the foundation’s main objectives was to “start an ideological offensive to rearm against the new thinking of the extreme right” to counteract the “pollution” with which right-wingers have contaminated the historical political right.
According to Escudero, socialists are the inheritors of the social democratic consensus reached in the post-war era and must fight against neoliberalism and “reactionary, libertarian, populist and post-democratic” that he claims aims at “dismantling” the rule of law.
They also have to reclaim “the sacred value of freedom” appropriated, in his opinion, by the Right in recent years and “restore its meaning.”
The Objective also reports that sources from the PSOE told the news site the Avanza Foundation will become the main idea laboratory for the party, moving ahead of older think tanks linked to the party such as Alternativas and the Pablo Iglesias Foundation.
One of its first endeavors will be a study to support Sánchez’ planned “democratic renewal” of Spain, which includes a package of laws regarding the media. Sánchez announced his plan earlier this year, after a Spanish judge opened an investigation into his wife Begoña Gómez’s business dealings following months of reports by several Spanish media outlets that led to a civic organization filing a complaint of corruption against Gómez.
Sánchez will formally present the new media laws in parliament on July 17.
