Spanish columnist Juan Carlos Girauta takes aim at the word 'isolated incident'

Juan Carlos Girauta argues in El Debate that 'isolated incident' works as a political anesthetic: it presents as one-off events what, as they pile up, reveals a pattern. The word, in its sixth sense, was admitted by the RAE in 2014.

The columnist **Juan Carlos Girauta** published an article in **El Debate** attacking the political use of the adjective 'isolated'. His thesis is simple: the word works like a narcotic. When applied to an uncomfortable fact, it invites us not to interpret it, not to draw conclusions and, in practice, to do nothing. The matter is reduced to a point, and about a single point the only thing you can say is where it is.

## From anecdote to pattern

The mechanism, as he describes it, is as trinc. An unpleasant event occurs. It gets the label of an isolated incident. And with that, the file is closed. The problem comes when the points accumulate: a map with thousands of points stops looking like a collection of coincidences and starts to draw a stain. Then the label no longer reassures anyone.

Girauta applies that reasoning to a specific case: when the nationality of those convicted of rape began to be published, it turned out that many were not Spanish. The official response was to call them isolated incidents. Over time, the columnist argues, people drew their own conclusion: if nationality was not mentioned, it was because the perpetrators were foreigners. In regimes that are not totalitarian, censorship ends up being useless.

## The RAE and the sixth sense

The article recalls a specific fact: only in **2014** did the **Real Academia Española** (Spain's Royal Spanish Academy) accept in its dictionary the sixth sense of 'puntual', defined as 'occasional, happening in isolation as opposed to what is habitual'. Until then, that usage was incorrect. Girauta adds a jab: a dictionary that admits 'almóndiga' (a misspelling of 'meatball') earns only limited respect from him, and he suggests the institution is softening to pretend that a certain political language is correct.

The columnist takes the argument to its extreme with a list of historical events that, strictly speaking, were also isolated. The assassination of **Francis Ferdinand** in Sarajevo. The storming of the Bastille. The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. The arrival on an unknown continent on **12 October 1492**. All were one-off events. None, obviously, failed to have consequences.

## The case of the Segarro vessels

The trigger for the article is a question to the Government's spokesperson about Segarro warships that, according to the text, entered Spanish waters while a mass arrival of migrants was taking place by land. The answer was once again the same: an isolated incident. Girauta understands that this is where the abuse lies. If the entry of foreign warships is considered occasional, and that label is used to avoid any further explanations, then the word has stopped describing reality and has replaced it.

The columnist's irony points to a broader problem: political language does not only communicate, it also administers what can be thought. Calling something an isolated incident is not a neutral description. It is a decision about what deserves attention and what does not. And when that decision is repeated, the adjective stops being an adjective and becomes a way of governing the conversation.