00:00So let's talk now to Denise Tordiu, Professor of Globalization, Business and Media at IE University in Spain.
00:08She's currently in Istanbul.
00:10Professor, welcome. The EU has called an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss this.
00:16How worried should other European countries be seeing these pictures?
00:22Well, thank you, Jamie.
00:24I think the precedent that we're setting here just a second ago, you were talking about Italy, right?
00:30And the Czech prime minister also calling for suspending Spain from Schengen altogether.
00:35This is genuinely harmful because Schengen did not mechanically break.
00:40But look at the reflex, right, that is producing and Italy's move.
00:45This actually normalizes a simple yet dangerous idea, right?
00:48Which is when one member is under pressure at their external border, instead of unifying behind it,
00:54you isolate it, right, instead of sharing the lot, which is what the Spanish government has been criticizing as well,
01:00because the external border is meant to be a shared responsibility, right?
01:04And at this rate, many of the European partners have been treating it as Spain's problem alone and isolating it
01:11even further.
01:12And every time when this happens, it actually gets easier to repeat and solidarity,
01:18which is something that we very much need if they're talking about the European Union,
01:21starts to feel rather optional and not foundational.
01:26And migration is now becoming the fault line that populist and extreme right movements have been using to pull the
01:33Union apart.
01:34What so often matters, as you know, are our pictures.
01:38I mean, I wonder to what extent might the images of this crisis be used by the Spanish and the
01:45wider European far right?
01:49Well, of course, to a very large extent, because what the imagery used by the far right is actually used
01:57to change the rhetoric, right?
01:59The narrative around immigration, because only one day ago, someone that you would maybe see as someone just like yourself,
02:06your classmate, any other human being trying to cross the border for whatever reason is now all of a sudden
02:12attached to vocabulary like military men,
02:15like invasion, like people coming out of World War Z, right?
02:20This actually creates a really dangerous precedent when we're talking about this imagery and the use of vocabulary,
02:26because we see this vocabulary that only up to a decade ago was marginalized now becoming mainstream, right?
02:34And this only pushes the mainstream right as well, as well as Pedro Sanchez's government to only play it tougher,
02:41right?
02:42And what we called common sense only up to, I don't know, some years ago is now something that everyone
02:48tries to be apologetic for.
02:50And that is the real harm, right? Because you can counter this with the numbers, because almost everyone that crossed
02:55the borders actually went back.
02:57But the imagery and the vocabulary that the far right is using behind it actually sets a precedent.
03:02And that is what's really worrying about it.
03:05Professor, thank you very much indeed for your time.
03:07Professor Tordju, Professor of Globalization, Business and Media at our university.
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