planetcher said:
For the Spaniards, I'd like to know how people there perceive Penafiel. This man is despicable. Why would he even drag innocent little Carla into this? She just basically went along with Cristina's children who happened to have nannies and escorts. Why does he have to paint a picture of Carla using their perks? What's wrong if she was on an exclusive beach with them? Wasn't she a guest? It's the same logic that my brother can play in a members-only golf course because he is a guest of someone who lives in the country club. He always tries to put a bad meaning in everything.
My aunt is a retired journalist who was part of the press corps that traveled with the King and Queen during the late 70s and early 80s. She knows Penafiel and describes him as a "self-important and bitter man" who will say anything just to be heard. Apparently he was fired from Hola at one point and tried and failed to start his own magazine to compete with it. It is also my understanding that he was part of the old Franquista guard, who, among other things, never forgave King Juan Carlos for essentially abolishing any kind of "court" when he became King. Before Letizia, the King was his most likely target. His favorite is of course Luis Alfonso and his mother, grand daughter and great-grandson of Franco. And don't think his criticism is limited to the Spanish RF--it's not. He is particulalry vicious to the late Princess Diana and Mette-Marit, and, if I recall correctly, has more or less said that the late Princess Grace was a drunken whore who used her acting skills to become the world's best princess.
El Mundo publishes him because, while it has wonderful investigative reporting, it also has a tendency towards irreverance and controversy. They always frame every article in the most polemic manner possible. A simple example, when Letizia's pregancy was announced every newspaper had a straight forward headline: Princess of Asturias expecting first child, or the like. Not El Mundo, their headline was "Pregancy opens constititional polemic" or something to that effect (the owner/editor of El Mundo is a real character himself, and was in a big videoed sex scandal a few years ago, to say nothing of his hypocritcal wife who claims to be a republican but sued to have the right to inherit her father's noble title).
Many people write about the Spanish RF with a fair eye, they are honest and critical at the same time. He is neither honest nor fair. My favorite chronicalist is the woman who writes for La Vanguardia. She writes well, honestly and fairly.
My long-winded two cents.
