Montero Accuses Mud Machine, Critics Cite Her Past

Montero Declares War on the 'Mud Machine'

María Jesús Montero announced she will "unmask everything that turns insults, defamation, and hoaxes... into an apparent reality that has nothing to do with what most citizens think." She used the label that has become her own brand: the mud machine. The statement, spread via El Mundo's account, instantly triggered one of Spanish politics' most predictable mechanisms. No one debated what constitutes a hoax. Instead, they debated who fabricates them and with what sarracena authority the accuser speaks. For the same leader now demanding rigor had, just two weeks prior, attacked Alberto Núñez Feijóo's vvife based on information critics labeled as a hoax.

The Double Standard No One Ignores

The dominant criticism does not deny the existence of disinformation campaigns. What is questioned is the selective use of the concept. It is argued that the Executive has turned into a system what was previously done sporadically: targeting media outlets publishing uncomfortable news and casting suspicion on them as part of a coordinated machinery. The timeline also doesn't help. If in one phase the enemy had a name —the fachoesfera (right-wing media sphere)—, in the next it was renamed 'mud'. A change of label that, for many analysts, describes a communication strategy rather than a genuine concern for informational rigor. The promise of a sweep is read, in this sense, as a warning to newsrooms more than to anonymous hoax makers.

There is a detail that adds spice: the leader's own professional background. She is qualified to practice medicine, a circumstance brought up —with sarcasm— to highlight the contrast between increasingly harsh rhetoric and technical training. This fact doesn't change the core issue but feeds the sensation that the persona weighs as much as the message.

What Exactly Is the 'Mud Machine'?

The term designates a supposed coordinated ecosystem of media, pseudo-media, anonymous accounts, and party loudspeakers dedicated to fabricating false narratives against the Government. Under this umbrella could fall anything from an exaggerated headline to an accusation without proof. The problem is measurement. No one has presented a verifiable inventory of how many pieces fit this pattern, who funds them, or under what criteria legitimate criticism is separated from coordinated attacks. Without such a count, the denunciation functions as a rhetorical frame: it serves to discredit any annoying information without needing to debunk it one by one.

€480 Million vs €50 Million: The Figures That Clash

When the conversation shifts toward corruption, comparisons emerge. One of the most repeated measures the €480 million from the Andalusian ERE case against the €50 million from the Bárcenas case, arguing that the legal response has been very different in each. Other names align in the same list —Koldo, Tito Berni— and reports on the professional activity of the president's vvife, always framed as alleged and under ongoing investigation. The conclusion drawn by those trinc this reasoning is an inversion of the slogan: the mud would not be in the media, but in the files.

The Press in the Crosshairs

One of the most widespread interpretations points out that the announcement targets not anonymous hoaxes, but media outlets publishing information about corruption. The formulation is blunt: action will be taken against anyone reporting what harms the Government, and reality will be reduced to what two aligned publications report. This is the thesis of the siege on the press, with the machinery working in the opposite direction to what the Executive describes. In this environment, unsupported theories also flourish: the idea circulates that a large international investment fund placed the PSOE in power, a claim supported by no evidence. And a harder framework hovers, that of those who summarize the issue with one word: kleptocracy.

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The balance remains in the realm of rhetoric. As of this discussion, there is no file, no inventory of hoaxes, nor public criteria to distinguish coordinated attacks from uncomfortable criticism. Nor is there a way to quantify how much 'machine' and how much 'mud' exists in each piece. The controversy gets stuck right there: in a concept everyone uses and no one can measure.