When Salvados aired its special on Rita Barberá, the absence of senior Partido Popular leaders stood out. Not one member of the PP’s national leadership, Mariano Rajoy, María Dolores de Cospedal or Fernando Martínez-Maíllo, agreed to appear. The silence was so complete that even Barberá’s longtime ally Mayren Beneyto could only say, "Por algo será." Her words hung in the air, summing up the refusal to confront the party’s own history.
Barberá’s story is bound up with Valencia’s change. For 24 years, she ran the city, winning five straight absolute majorities and becoming a political fixture. Her image was everywhere, from balconies to public events and the press. She shaped the city’s identity and became its symbol. But as Salvados showed, the same system that elevated her quickly turned away when scandals broke.
In 2016, Rita Barberá became the first former mayor of Valencia to be investigated by the Supreme Court over alleged money laundering linked to the Taula case.
The program divided Barberá’s career into two acts: Mascletà, an era of noise and fireworks crowned by triumph, and Cremà, the burning away of illusions. The first act showed a leader who thrived on attention and spectacle, celebrated almost as much as the city’s patron saints. The second focused on isolation. As corruption scandals, including Gürtel and Nóos before Taula, closed in, Barberá’s world narrowed. The woman once surrounded by crowds ended her days alone in a Madrid hotel room, cut off from the party she had served.
Salvados did not gloss over Barberá’s failures. The program revisited her response to the 2006 Metrovalencia accident, in which 43 people died and 47 were injured. Victims’ families recalled that Barberá never met with them, while footage showed her making dismissive gestures during protests. Beatriz Garrote of the victims’ association described a style of politics marked by arrogance and distance.
The program also showed the cruelty of Barberá’s final months. Her own party ostracized her, leaving her to face legal scrutiny alone; she died just days after testifying before the Supreme Court. The contrast between her public success and private downfall was stark. Salvados used silence in interviews to show the emptiness left when power disappears. The camera lingered on faces and unspoken words, making the absence of PP leaders even more striking.
Information from El País, the Taula case was one of the largest corruption investigations in Valencia. It implicated dozens of local officials and led to the arrest of several PP members. The investigation uncovered a network of illegal financing and money laundering that had operated for years, exposing systemic problems within the party’s regional structure.
Francisco Camps, former president of the Valencian Community, appeared visibly shaken as he recalled Barberá’s death. The program let silence fill the space after his words, conveying the emotional cost of political abandonment. Former colleagues said Barberá had considered stepping down before the 2015 elections, but Rajoy personally urged her to run again. When legal pressure mounted, the party that had relied on her popularity quickly distanced itself, moving her to the Senate’s mixed group and out of the PP’s inner circle.
Salvados also highlighted the contradiction in Rajoy’s relationship with Barberá: distance in public, support in private. Interviewees said Rajoy backed her behind closed doors but would not defend her publicly. Barberá was left exposed, with her political capital gone and her personal life reduced to isolation. Consuelo Reyna, former director of Las Provincias, described seeing Barberá in her final months, unrecognizable and withdrawn, hunched over in stark contrast to the forceful figure she had been.
The program’s visuals reinforced Barberá’s decline. As her influence faded, the spaces she occupied grew smaller, shifting from public squares and grand events to private rooms and empty corridors. The fallas, monuments built to be burned, became a literal metaphor in the closing scenes. After nearly two hours spent building Barberá’s legacy, Salvados set it alight, leaving only ashes and unanswered questions about loyalty and responsibility.
In Spanish politics, Barberá’s fate is not unique. Colleagues have disappeared when scandal hits, and power has given way to isolation before. As reported earlier, public life in Spain often brings abandonment by those closest when the tide turns. Salvados’ account of Barberá’s story suggests that political monuments are built for destruction as much as celebration. The PP leaders’ refusal to speak on camera was a calculated act of self-preservation and a personal slight, leaving the public to sift through the ashes for meaning. Salvados offered no closure or easy answers. Instead, it exposed the machinery of power and the cost of silence. In Spanish politics, danger can come from former friends as well as from enemies.
