Lola García: “We have turned politics into something too emotional”

In the construction of a story, as in a film, there is intentionally someone good and someone bad. “Politics is joining in the construction of these stories, they are no longer talking to us about politics and pacts, but about stories,” said this Wednesday the deputy director of La Vanguardia , Lola García, during a meeting with subscribers of the newspaper at the Cupra City Garage in Madrid.

Against these deliberate stories that are increasingly being propagated by politicians in the age of algorithms that try to pigeonhole us, García's recipe for discerning simplistic slogans is "to have a varied diet in terms of information consumption. Read and watch content that is not always the most reasonable in our opinion."

Against the current trend of selling polarised narratives, the journalist and political scientist believes that “politics has to be something negotiable. Politics is a way that societies have of negotiating among ourselves to reach agreements and move forward on certain issues. When you turn politics into a football match, into a narrative and emotions clashing between good and bad, it is impossible to negotiate. Politics should not be like that.”

The discussion with subscribers, moderated by Joana Bonet, director of La Vanguardia Magazine, focused on topics as varied as the post-coup , emotions as a political weapon, and the artificial intelligence-generated video that Donald Trump published on X about the Gaza Strip.

When asked by a subscriber about the viability of the European Union (EU) in the face of Trump's new policies, García was hopeful: “It is said that the EU takes steps forward just when it has major crises, and that is quite true. I would not be pessimistic in this case. For example, the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, did not want to know anything about us before and now he does not stop holding summits with the EU. It is very complex to move Europe, yes, fortunately. That is the greatness of politics: to reconcile. Europe will find a way to re-emerge and move forward.”

Born in Badalona in 1967, María Dolores García García has a degree in journalism and political science. A prominent political analyst, she has published several books on the rise of the independence movement in Catalonia, such as El naufragio (2018) and El muro (2022). García's talk yesterday is part of a series of events organised by La Vanguardia with the aim of bringing journalism closer to the newspaper's subscribers.