- The Gara newspaper has paid half a million euros every six months to deal with the debt of 3 million that they inherited after the closure of egin by order of Garzón. Iñaki Soto, director of the journal, has acknowledged that this is a "difficult punishment to endure" and thanked people who believe in freedom of the press and plurality.
Director Soto stressed that condemnation has been even more complicated “during the pandemic and without institutional support”. But once the debt has been paid, “the threat that we have had for twenty years, the threat of a burden that could have destroyed this means of communication.” The director says that they have faced the threat of closing the newspaper for political reasons and that it is positive news for Basque society, “beyond our readers and our community”.
Agridulce
After getting the hard and unfair, Soto stresses that the sensation is strange: pride, but also powerlessness. “We didn’t have to do it, but they have forced us, often thinking we wouldn’t. That’s why the fact that we’ve achieved it is proud, but at the same time we are bothered by discrimination and injustice.”
Judge Baltasar Garzón ordered the closure of Egin in 1998, and since then Gara has been taxed with an unjust debt to the Social Security.