The missing photo in Ceuta: the political use of the dead

The photo of the dead boy is not repeated in Ceuta: selective shock

The dead only exist if there is a photo. The image of the migrant boy lying on a beach went around the world and became a symbol of the migration crisis. Now, with more than 100 people dead in the waters off Ceuta, Spain, not a single image is circulating. A twist of fate? Highly unlikely.

The logic of selective shock

The central argument is easy to state: the dead are used when it is politically convenient. In the case of the photo of the boy on the beach, the symbolic value was perfect: an innocent victim, a recognizable setting, a composition designed for impact. That was the image of the crisis. In Ceuta, with more than a hundred deaths, not a single photo has appeared. The most widespread reading is not about editorial caution but about profitability: if those images do not move votes, they have no publication value.

The Ramblas contrast: the photo returned to sender

Selectivity is not the preserve of one side alone. The Ramblas attack in Barcelona left a single child dead, three-year-old Xavier Martínez. His face ended up as a profile picture among independence supporters, who also spread the theory that the attack had been orchestrated by Mariano Rajoy's government to harm Catalonia on the eve of the 1-O referendum. All of it without any evidence. That image did go viral, but in service of a specific narrative: the same mechanism in the opposite direction.

If the publication of images trinc electoral logic, the next migration tragedy may once again be left without a face. Unless a formula appears to turn a corpse into votes. Recent history suggests that, in that arithmetic, a child's life only counts when the photo can tip the scales. Draw your own conclusions.