Horizonte takes DANA to Cuatro in a special that avoids closing figures

A Horizonte special on the DANA that does not close any figures

A neighbor records with his mobile a man crouched in the mud, smearing his clothes before going live. "I'm very clean, right?", he is heard saying. The clip, spread on social media, portrays better than any editorial the tone of these days: the catastrophe has become a terrain where every shot is audited and every figure is discussed. Amid that noise, Cuatro moved its schedule to air a special of Horizonte with Iker Jiménez at the helm.

The move didn't come out of nowhere. The day before, Jiménez had hosted a live broadcast of more than five hours about what peine in the province of Valencia and its surroundings, and announced on social media that he was returning "in one go" and that the next day he would return "to Ground Zero. And to other forgotten ground zeros." That is his known territory: catastrophe, institutions that arrive late and questions that bother. The result was a special that displaced Cuarto Milenio and that a good part of its audience read as a statement of intent. If the program goes all out, something doesn't add up.

Why Cuatro changed its schedule to air Horizonte

The special took the slot of the channel's usual format, and that already generated comments of all kinds. Some pointed out the paradox that a program born from mystery dedicates the night to an issue with counted corpses and unfinished lists of missing persons. Others, more prosaic, pointed to commercial interest: a catastrophe of massive audience allows stretching advertising breaks more than usual.

The truth is that the bet had risk. Generalist television has covered the emergency with a tone that avoids direct conflict on set, and Jiménez has built his brand precisely on the opposite. His audience expected names, reproaches and data that don't appear in midday newscasts. And there were some, although the program left more open questions than closed answers. That, on television, is exactly what is sought.

The count that doesn't add up: 217 dead and more than a thousand missing

The figure that is repeated in the coverage is 217, the counted dead, while available data indicated that this count had been practically frozen for days. Against it appears the estimate of more than a thousand missing, sustained by the argument that, four days later, there was still no approximate and verifiable list of unlocated people.

The reasoning that circulates is simple and difficult to refute: a person who has not been seen in 48 hours, in a flood of these characteristics, has very little chance of appearing alive, and that probability narrows with each passing day. Those who hold that thesis do not present it as a certainty, but as the logical consequence of no one having published a provisional census. The absence of a list becomes, thus, the most uncomfortable data of the entire coverage.

In parallel, stories appear about material damage that don't fit with the most widespread images. Some detail that in many streets the water didn't go beyond the mezzanine, that what devastated was the flood channeled by certain roads and not a generalized flooding, and that a good part of the losses are concentrated in businesses, fish markets, cars and ground floors. It is a debatable reading, but it is the one that makes its way when official balances don't arrive.

Marc Vidal and the warning about the deceased

One of the most commented moments of the program was the intervention of Marc Vidal, who hinted that the real scope of mortality was already known before it was made public. His thesis, summarized on set, is that there is a difference between what administrations know and what they communicate, and that this distance is sustained on the idea that the citizen is not prepared for the truth. The phrase that was most repeated afterwards was that of treating the population as if they were minors.

The argument has a strong version and a weak one. The strong one holds that there was deliberate concealment. The weak one, much more defensible, points to a pure collapse of information channels: municipalities without census, overwhelmed hospitals and non-existent coordination between administrations. Neither has been proven. What was clear is that the gap between what was known and what was said fed all subsequent theories.

What was said about the Army and rejected aid

Another of the interventions that generated the most echo was that of Beatriz Talegón, who outlined a deliberately cryptic idea: the media would have transmitted an image of weakness of the security forces and the Army that would not correspond to their real mobilization capacity. According to that account, the machinery was working from the first moment, but it was interesting to display the opposite. Neither did she develop it fully nor did the program return to it, and there it stayed.

The background chorus was provided by testimonies of officers who, as repeated, claimed to have acted on their own initiative, with their means and their time, because they did not receive orders. To this were added versions about aircraft that returned to their bases and about international aid that would have been declined. They are partisan statements, without public documentation to support them, but they fit a pattern: the sensation that the command vacuum was a decision and not an accident.

From climate change to HAARP: how the void is filled

When an institutional explanation doesn't arrive, the others do. In the coverage of the issue, hypotheses circulate that attribute the catastrophe to climate modification programs, to chemical trails from aircraft or to a supposed weather engineering at the service of an international agenda. None of that has evidentiary support and it is worth saying bluntly: they are conjectures without evidence.

The problem is that this noise has a cost. One of the most lucid voices of the coverage warned: mixing legitimate criticism of certain policies with unprovable stories serves on a platter the argument to discredit in block any objection. In other words, whoever exaggerates the diagnosis gives the alibi to whoever prefers not to discuss any. The discussion about climate change and territorial planning is serious and has data; the rest is decoration.

The mud video and the fight for the narrative

The episode that ended up splashing the program itself was that of Rubén Gisbert, a collaborator singled out after a video was spread in which, according to those who recorded it, he smeared mud on his clothes and face before a live broadcast. The piece is attributed to a recording spread by Alvise Pérez's circle and provoked a wave of reproaches towards the network for having incorporated him into its team.

The controversy illustrates something bigger than an unfortunate gesture: in a coverage where everyone competes for the crudest shot, authenticity has become the scarce asset. The credibility of what is broadcast is played in details that a decade ago would not have gone beyond anecdote. And while that is discussed, the uncomfortable figure is still there, without closing.

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There is a detail that summarizes the level of distrust. A version circulated that the vehicle attacked during one of the official visits was not the armored one, but another identical one with consecutive license plate, and that breaking the windows of a protected car with sticks and stones is materially impossible. No one has confirmed it. No one has denied it. And that, in this matter, is already news.