People for and against independence in Barcelona. / Photo: Ernest CS, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Diplomat. 10/07/2018
The campaign of international discredit launched by the Catalan pro-independence campaigners against the Spanish political institutions has not aroused significant interest among the international public opinion, according to a survey spread by Elcano Royal Institute, which warned, nevertheless, that it is still “essential” to fight against “the campaign of disinformation and discredit”.
According to Carmen González Enríquez, senior analyst of the Think Tank and professor of UNED, Spain’s image “as an authoritarian State, which does not respect the freedom of expression and has political prisoners”, has been “losing weight and presence in international media” and among the international public opinion, in which the “campaign of discredit against the Spanish State” “has not had any impact”.
An example of that, she continued, is the last edition of the Country RepTrak®, a survey conducted every year among the countries of the G7, Russia and several European and Latin American countries that analyzes Spain’s prestige in countries as significant as France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the US, Canada, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russia, Argentine, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Morocco.
On a scale from 1 to 10, the average rating of Spain has gone from 7,5 to 7,3 points between the survey of the beginning of 2017 and that of the beginning of 2018 -before and after the most serious events of the procés-, a difference of 0,2 tenths of point that “is less than the margin of error and, therefore, does not indicate a fall”, González added. In the case of Latin America, the rating has been of 6,9 in both cases.
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Elcano warns that, despite its little social impact, it is “essential to fight against the campaign of disinformation”
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Moreover, Spain is always among the 20 first most prestigious countries in the world, within a global scale that comprises the 55 biggest economies of the planet. This year, Spain holds the 14th position, before Germany, France or the United Kingdom.
Nevertheless, although the campaign of discredit “has not aroused significant interest among the international public opinion”, that “does not mean that it does not have influence in specific fields, such as those of politicians, intellectuals, jurist or activists, whose perceptions can be much more relevant than those of the public opinion of their countries”, warned the senior analyst, for whom “fighting against the campaign of disinformation and discredit continues to be something essential”.
