De Prada’s ABC Column Sparks Debate: ‘Hang and Disembowel’

De Prada’s ABC Column on the DANA: Opinion, Literary License, or Crime?

Can a columnist call for the government’s hanging in a national newspaper and remain unbothered? Juan Manuel de Prada wrote this in his ABC column, published by Spain’s Vocento group, and within hours, the conversation about the flooding in the Levant shifted to a more uncomfortable terrain: his own text. The possibility that a prosecutor might act ex officio circulated in the debate. The question is whether this is opinion, literary license, or a crime.

The text attacks the Executive for its management of the disaster and dedicates a string of insults to the governors, which need not be reproduced here. What matters is at the end: a paragraph where the author writes that if Spaniards did not have ‘horchata in their veins’, it would be necessary to ‘hang them and then disembowel them’. The subject is the governors. The verb, a conditional.

The Conditional as Shield and Target

This verb form supports much of the argument. Those defending the columnist cling to it: there is no call to action, only rhetorical venting, and the entire article — they insist — is an exercise in incendiary style, not a manual of instructions. Those demanding accountability respond that the verb form does not erase the content, and that having dead and missing people on the table does not turn an incitement into literature.

Here appears the first real fracture. Some read the paragraph as a metaphor for collective indignation; others, as a threshold crossed. And the issue, from then on, was no longer meteorological.

1957, 1982, and 2024: The Data Used in the Column

To deny that the disaster was unpredictable, the article draws on archives. In the 1982 ‘gota fría’ (cold drop), which burst the Tous dam and left forty dead, up to one thousand liters per square meter fell in Cortes de Pallàs, double that of this occasion. The 1957 event took eighty lives, though there are no reliable rainfall records from that time: the pluviometers of the era had a maximum capacity of two hundred liters per square meter.

The conclusion he draws is simple: the Levant has always suffered the same phenomenon — maritime polar air with easterly winds — and giving it a new name does not change it. From there, he jumps to management. With orange alerts already active on Monday, he argues, classes should have been suspended, rescue personnel mobilized, and roads closed. None of this was done, and the water caught drivers and residents in already flooded ravines and roads.

He also criticizes the Prime Minister for suggesting that the population ignored civil protection instructions. In his view, when alerts reached mobile phones, many people were already being swept away.

The Legal Debate: Is There a Hate Crime Against Politicians?

One participant reproduces the provision and argues that there is not: the law punishes incitement to hatred or violence against groups or individuals based on race, religion, ethnicity, sensual orientation, gender identity, ideology, illness, or disability, and a government, party, or president does not fit into that list. Outside of that, according to this reasoning, such a text would only be prosecutable as incivil incitement or apology, and the conditional moves it away from both types.

This is the reasoning that circulates in detail in the thread and explains why, at the close of the debate, there was no record of any ex officio action. This does not miccionan the author escapes unscathed: some assume his signature in the newspaper may be in question.

The Reaction: Calls for Accountability and an Uncomfortable Comparison

The column became the center of the day. In the thread, readers demand that the management of ABC and Vocento provide explanations, and some claim that a journalist from El País compared De Prada to the perpetrators of the Rwanda genocide, attributing to him, without saying so, a call for imprisonment. The debate material contains no record of a rectification or withdrawal of the text by the newspaper.

Here opens another front. Some see proof of protection in that no one has moved a piece; others, at the other extreme, assume his signature in ABC may be terminated. The two readings coexist unresolved.

What the Author Has at Stake

On the table is his continuity in the newspaper’s column. In the air, whether this episode marks a before and after in what a header allows its most incendiary pen to publish.

The underlying conversation is different. If the media withdraws the text, it admits it went too far. If it maintains it, it assumes the fruta cost. And if it does nothing, it leaves the issue to be resolved by the calendar, which is how almost all have been resolved.

Gota Fría, DANA, and the Climate Narrative

The other axis of the text is terminological. The author argues that what the Government and Brussels call climate change is the ‘gota fría’ (cold drop) of all time, and cites Ursula von der Leyen — ‘the dramatic reality of climate change’ — as proof of the official narrative. For him, this narrative serves to distribute blame among the population and justify new impositions.

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At the close of this debate, the column remained the center of discussion, and there was no record of any ex officio action. If it was a metaphor, it functioned as a metaphor. If it was a threat, it still waits for someone, in some office, to decide if the conditional is a shield or an excuse.