Díaz Ayuso's new Telemadrid bets on "extolling" the Royal Family

Telemadrid headquarters in the City of the Image of Pozuelo de Alarcón.JVS

It is October 2019, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso explodes.

She has just learned that in a Telemadrid program (

) they have mocked the Infanta Elena ("Be very careful, darling, you are on the verge of the Third Age. From here to embroider the initials on Victoria Federica's panties there is a very thin line”).

The conservative leader judges those comments "regrettable" and "incomprehensible".

And she sends a very harsh letter of protest to the chain's management.

Almost three years later, everything has changed.

At the head of regional television there is now a person trusted by Díaz Ayuso, José Antonio Sánchez, a self-confessed PP voter.

And public television has gone from joking about the Royal Family to dedicating a weekly program to it in

night, where its last broadcast, on Sunday, was left with 1.2% of the share (which represents its worst difference compared to the average of the chain, which was 4.2%).

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From tele-Espe to tele-Ayuso

“TVE also has a program about the Royal House, because it is the highest institution of the Spanish constitutional regime, the head of state, and therefore I think that the general public is interested in knowing about its activities, as happens in all countries where there is a Monarchy”, defended Sánchez in his last appearance in the Assembly, on March 8, where he tried to establish a parallelism between national chains, and linked to the State, with his, autonomous and by definition regional.

"(...) People are very interested in that (...)", he assured about the program, which began airing at the end of January.

“Everything that public television channels do to maintain and praise the work of the Crown, which is what unites all Spaniards, is something that is a public service and that I am very proud of.”

The program follows in detail the public activity of the King and Queen, their travels, the collection of Royal Guard cars, and their horses, or the work of National Heritage professionals.

He has also spent time, for example, on notions of protocol, explaining how members of the Royal Family should be greeted and treated.

A content that has provoked the indignation of the opposition deputies, no matter how much the

has dealt in depth with the archive of the investigations into Juan Carlos I, the letter in which the King Emeritus announced his resignation to return to reside in Spain permanently at this time, or the separation of Iñaki Urdangarin and the Infanta Cristina.

"I don't know what it brings to Madrid society to know the intimacies of the Royal Family," Vanesa Lillo, a IU deputy integrated into the United We Can parliamentary group, complained in that commission.

“They tell us the propaganda of the Royal Family, which nobody is interested in,” Hugo Martínez Abarca, from Más Madrid, prolonged him.

"It is a courtly program, not an information one, which does not respond to a parliamentary democracy, even if it is monarchical," he launched.

"The Royal House generates a lot of very juicy information that does not appear in the program," he criticized.

"Spain deserves that we can also criticize the Head of State, and that is more loyalty than the servility of those who have accompanied him for more than 40 years of corruption."

An assessment that caused a stir in the commission: "I would ask you to respect the institutions, I would like some of your allusions to be withdrawn," Alicia Sánchez Camacho, the president of the body (PP), replied.

The

program began to be broadcast on January 30, 2022, coinciding with the birthday of Felipe VI.

Since then, it has occupied the Sunday

on the regional network to "bring the people of Madrid closer to their Kings", according to the Telemadrid website.

Its content is similar to that already offered by RTVE with the

program .

The result is probably not the desired one: it barely obtained a 1.2% share this last Sunday, compared to 4.2% for the chain, according to data from the consulting firm Geca.

Its eight broadcasts, furthermore, have barely averaged 2.4%, well below the average for the channel.

Consequently, only a few tens of thousands of people watch the program, in line with the audience problems that Telemadrid is having since the PP and Vox managed to control the network thanks to a change in the law achieved in the regional Assembly.

However, the content of the program is perfectly aligned with Díaz Ayuso's speech.

The president of the Community bases a large part of her political approach on the idea that the region concentrates everything that the country as a whole means ("Madrid is Spain") and has become a staunch defender of the Crown, come rain, shine or shine

Thus, after the controversy caused by questioning the King about whether or not he would sign the pardons of the Catalan independence leaders, Díaz Ayuso even took advantage of his institutional speech on the occasion of Constitution Day to vindicate the king emeritus, Juan Carlos I, then investigated by alleged financial irregularities that were finally archived.

“I have left two heroes, the two main ones, to whom we owe the first and constant, brave, imaginative and determined impulse that the Constitution brought us: King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía,” Díaz began then. Ayuso, dressed entirely in green, a real monarchical wink because that color is the acronym for the phrase "long live the King of Spain."

"From here, my thanks to the King and Queen and the wish that Don Juan Carlos have at least a little of the generosity that he always showed us," she continued.

"Long live the king, and long live Spain," she closed.

An intervention prior to the premiere of a program outsourced to a production company, and for which Telemadrid has to pay, despite the fact that it is presented by a historic journalist from the network.

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