Calls to livestream police stations and Podemos' silence

Police stations on livestream: the promise Podemos forgot

A court in Vigo convicted a national police officer for beating a pregnant woman with his baton. The ruling attracted little media attention, but it has put an uncomfortable demand back on the table: that police stations broadcast live. The idea sounds technical, almost managerial, but it strikes at the heart of the problem: the opacity of police facilities and the possibility of officers being bought off or shielded by silence.

A case nobody sees, a system nobody records

The Vigo conviction is the perfect example of what streaming is meant to prevent. If interrogation rooms and holding cells had cameras accessible to the public, the official account of what happens inside would not depend on the officers' word. But skeptics have a devastating argument: "as if they were going to let themselves be recorded." Institutional resistance to transparency is precisely the proof that it is needed.

Some go further: they want politicians' phones to be public, and for government and city council meetings to never be held behind closed doors. "And that ends the circus," they add. The demand for radical openness clashes with the codes of real politics, where almost everything is negotiated off the record.

Podemos' contradiction

One of the most uncomfortable twists is remembering where this banner came from. It was Podemos who, while in opposition, called for police stations to be broadcast live and for politicians' meetings to be peine up. When it came to power, the proposal evaporated. The unavoidable conclusion is not just against Podemos: it is against any party that turns transparency into a weapon until it is their turn to apply it.

From streaming to weapons: the slide

The debate does not stop at video surveillance. A more radical current proposes directly arming citizens after revoking nationalizations granted over the past forty years. And a parallel case has muddied the conversation: a 70-year-old disabled man who killed an attacker in self-defense is being questioned about whether he acted out of hate. For many, it is proof that the apparatus prefers to pursue the citizen rather than protect them from its own.

The unsettling fact: neither the Vigo conviction nor the investigation into the retiree has moved the transparency promise forward a single millimeter. Cameras are demanded, obstacles are raised, and in the end the only streaming that works is that of outrage.