Tuesday 9.30 in the morning: another insulting and racist call to the Mondariz Spa Town Hallthe smallest Galician municipality (with just over 600 residents), but with some tourist and hot spring facilities considered among the best in Europe. They have been like this for two weeks. The origin, a xenophobic hoax against the supposed occupation of a school to accommodate 170 immigrants. It was used in the summer as an activities centre and returned to its normal use at the beginning of the school year. But the hoax about the usurpation of municipal facilities has continued. The damage is done: it is what is considered the liar’s dividend, the intentional harm of a hoax whose evil spreads before and more than a denial.
“85% are from Mali and the rest from Senegal and other countries,” explains patiently the mayor, César Gil Bernárdez, from the BNG, who attributes all the false information to “people who don’t even know the town.” “The residents are calm. People have accepted it with the same normality as when they welcomed the Ukrainian immigrants. Not a single resident has come to the Town Hall to ask for explanations or to complain or to express any kind of rejection,” he clarifies.
Just like the Seville municipality of Alcalá de Guadaíra, which was subjected to a xenophobic explosion on the networks a week ago due to the arrival of asylum seekers, now it is the turn of Mondariz Balneario (Pontevedra).
The origin is a video recorded during the summer months at the school, when it is reused for workshops and camps. The 170 immigrants, from Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) and Mérida (Badajoz) after their arrival in the Canary Islands in a national effort to distribute the migrants, then participate in activities in the premises and also use it to rest. “At the end of August it is converted back into a school and the immigrants are now in the hotel,” says the mayor.
During her time at school, the mother of a girl who is attending the centre records images of the African children at the school during the summer and shares them, only to delete them shortly afterwards. But the shockwave of the lie is now unstoppable. “The first news I have is through Twitter [en referencia a X] And from there, a chain of messages, calls and emails was produced that were quite out of line,” explains Gil, who has been trying to respond to all the false information ever since.
“Are [los bulos] “We are talking about strangers who don’t even know what is going on. They have no identity or connection to the village,” she explains. The neighbours, on the other hand, are exemplary in their welcoming attitude. They have already had Ukrainian refugees. “But then, because they were white and blond, nothing was said,” laments a neighbour who is fed up with the use of her village for xenophobic messages.
The initial hoax, even if it was removed, was picked up by the networks. The oldest trace of the video found on the platforms is a Facebook post from August 29: A user (who shows his sympathy for the PP on his social networks) shares a screenshot of the video: shoes leaning against a wall, an immigrant resting on an armchair, some young people walking around the facilities in towels. Later, on September 11, another Facebook user shares it as if it were current. But it is a lie, the school is already prepared for the return to classes and the neighbors do not protest or are worried then.
🔴Galicia: the parents of the Mondariz-Balneario School (Pontevedra), send me this video, they have put 200 immigrants from Mali in a municipality of 700 inhabitants.
And pay attention to this, the school management has advised the parents of the girls not to wear skirts, since the… pic.twitter.com/rvNOsiwwJ3
— Mr.Liberal (@SrLiberal) September 15, 2024
Two days ago, on September 15, the video pops up again stronger than ever: a user who introduces himself as Sr.Liberal recovers the video recorded a month earlier to amplify the hoax with his own lies that he develops in a tweet: “Galicia: the parents of the Mondariz-Balneario School (Pontevedra), sent me this video, they have put 200 immigrants from Mali in a town of 700 inhabitants. And watch out for this, the school management has advised the parents of the girls not to wear skirts, since the minors will have to live with them in the same facilities. The parents are terrified. Let all of Galicia and all of Spain know what is happening.” The video has more than 1.7 million views on X.
The official account of The world expands the number of immigrants and echoes: “280 Malians welcomed in the smallest municipality in Galicia: the “solidary” mayor and the “no” neighbor. Another user (Sephe) raises the stakes. For this one, it’s already 300.
The bait is served. Spanishness This Monday, the newspaper published an article with the same false headline as Sr.Liberal: “A school in Pontevedra advises its students not to wear skirts… because in their school they will have to live with immigrants.” And it continues: The Gazette of the Iberosphere with the same false information.
The scheme is simple and is explained by Madeleine Janickyj, a researcher in Natural Language Processing at University College London who specialises in the use of computational tools for abuse and hate: “Fake news and lies spread much faster. They are sensationalist and people latch on to them. It is difficult to stop because of the speed at which they spread and because people trust them. But we should verify before assuming information.”
For Wenrong Zheng, an expert at Shandong University in data analysis and author of an investigation into “false information” “fabricated by people with intent and without foundation,” the spread of these lies does not respond to epidemic models, where the hoax acts like a virus. “Infectious disease models view the spread of rumors as a passive process of receiving the infection, thus ignoring behavioral and psychological changes in people in the real world, as well as the impact of external events on the spread of rumors,” he explains.
According to his work, hoaxes require complicity and are more like “the chain reaction that occurs inside nuclear reactors.” They start on a small scale (the home video of a student’s mother in the case of Mondariz Balneario), but, as the researcher explains, “when people come across hoaxes, they are influenced by their personal interests and prejudices and decide whether to spread them or if repeated exposure is necessary before spreading them,” he adds.
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