Albert Castillón: 'Either Sánchez ends up in prison or there will be a dictatorship'

Castillón warns: 'Either Sánchez ends up in prison or there will be a dictatorship'

Albert Castillón said it bluntly: either the Prime Minister ends up in the dock, or Spain slides toward an authoritarian regime. The remark, delivered as a binary ultimatum, leaves no middle ground and has worked like a match in a powder keg. The reaction was swift, and the most common diagnosis is that the presenter is confusing dictatorship with tyranny, when the term that best fits the political vocabulary is another one: nepotism.

What the word dictatorship actually means

A dictatorship, in its classic sense, is a regime in which a single individual or group concentrates all the powers of the State with no institutional checks and no free elections. A tyranny adds the element of abuse and cruelty in the exercise of that power. Nepotism, by contrast, describes favoritism toward relatives and cronies in the handing out of posts and perks. Those who reject the comparison argue that Castillón has mixed up the three concepts to grab a headline, and that terminological precision matters when talking about a political system.

Some go further and point out that the word fascism is used today as casually as a verbal tic. The habit of labeling one's opponent with the gravest term available wears down the vocabulary and empties the accusations of meaning. When everything is a dictatorship, nothing is.

The 60% tax burden and the debt the grandchildren will pay

The underlying discontent is not just rhetoric. The calculation circulating most widely among those sharing this frustration suggests that between direct and indirect taxes, more than 60% of the average worker's income is taken away. On top of that comes a public debt that, according to this reading, mortgages future generations and has been managed through laws passed without prior consultation. The complaint is not only economic: it is about method.

The criticism comes with a double-edged argument. Those who defend the government consider the complaints filed against the Prime Minister to be inconsistent and unlikely to succeed. Those who attack the government respond that the opposition should direct its fire at the executive rather than at the complainants, if it really has arguments. The result is a exchange of accusations in which nobody seems willing to give ground.

Why the word fascist has become an automatic insult

Beneath the whole affair lies a cultural grievance: not being left-wing has come to be treated as an insult in itself. Anyone who does not subscribe to the pogre narrative is automatically labeled a far-right extremist, and that, according to this thesis, explains why public debate has become so bitter. The right's inferiority complex in the face of that label, they argue, is what prevents an alternative discourse from taking shape with equal force.

The historical comparison is also used as a weapon. Some point out that the acknowledged reference point of certain leaders is not the one their adversaries attribute to them, and that the regime of the Spanish transition is presented by some as the origin of all today's ills. The circle of power forged in that era, the argument goes, still operates today with the same logic of threat: either Spain is mine, or I set it on fire.

A point of no return nobody can date

The expression point of no return is the most repeated and the least defined. When exactly is it crossed? With a final conviction? With a specific legal reform? Nobody says. What is repeated is the idea that dictatorships last until the dictator dies, while democracies perpetuate themselves through their own inertia. It is a bitter irony, but it captures the underlying skepticism well.

On this basis, the safest prediction is that the tension will not resolve itself. If the judicial process moves forward, Castillón's narrative will gain or lose strength depending on the outcome. If it stalls, the phrase will remain one more hyperbole among the many that punctuate Spanish public debate. What nobody disputes is that the point of no return, if it exists, does not yet have a date on the calendar.