At the beginning of last December I was in Switzerland, participating in a sociological seminar . I had planned to return to Spain on the 5th, on flights from Zurich-Mallorca-Madrid (the Majorcan stopover was the obligatory toll for traveling with a low-cost airline). As soon as we heard about the conflict with the controllers, Spanish colleagues were alarmed: would our flights be affected? We spent 3 and 4 days worried about the news. Our first reaction was anger and even indignation. From Switzerland, a country where things work almost perfectly, Spain once again gave the impression of third-world shoddiness.

Once at home, one abandons the role of the long-suffering traveler and becomes a sociologist again, and cannot help but be interested in some aspects of this singular confrontation. On the one hand, the villainous controllers, who do not hesitate to leave hundreds of thousands of passengers in the lurch in defense of the selfish interests of group. On the other hand, the heroic Government, which sample has the necessary determination to bring to heel a privileged group out of its depth. Finally, some rulers who dare to remedy an unjust status dragged on for years! Enough of these small professional groups, such as the Madrid Metro drivers, who blackmail the population as a whole to defend unjustified privileges! The drama is ready for mass consumption: there are good guys and bad guys, a relevant conflict and what seems to be the final battle. The unknown outcome ensures excitement, although the good guys are expected to win in the end.

The attitude of the sociological method teaches us to distrust appearances and not to be satisfied with official definitions. It is very rare that in any conflict, whether between individuals, groups or nations, one of the contenders is absolutely right and the other is wrong. Chemically pure black and white rarely occur in social reality. Hence the question must be asked: are the controllers as perverse as the government and its media apparatus would have us believe? As one learns the details, it becomes necessary to abandon the simplistic Manichaeism and begin to qualify. The controllers are making their voice heard, preferably through the channels offered by the Internet, since the traditional media have mostly signed up to the governmental thesis . If one worries about getting to the bottom of the matter, a very different picture emerges.

The Government -in this case, with the financial aid of AENA- sample, once again, its proven capacity to manipulate and distract public opinion with effective smoke screens. In the committee of Ministers on December 3, the Executive approved a package of measures difficult to "sell" to the citizens: elimination of the financial aid of the 426 Euros; increase in taxes on tobacco and alcohol; suppression of the MUFACE, which put an end to the privilege of civil servants in relation to the attendance health care; privatization of AENA. Focusing public interest on the conflict with the controllers allowed to distract attention, resource typical of governments in trouble. Whipping up general indignation against a specific enemy allows many other things to be swallowed, from the scandalous economic status of AENA to the enactment of the state of alarm, an unprecedented measure in our democracy (it seems that it took us very little time to forget the time and effort it took us to gain access to democratic freedoms). It can be seen that the "scapegoat" continues to make sense in plenary session of the Executive Council s. XXI; for example, the Government now blames the air traffic controllers for the fall in membership to Social Security during 2010 (sic).

When AENA -not the air traffic controllers- decided to suspend air traffic, both business and the Government hid this fact from the thousands of passengers waiting at the airports. In an artful way they were told that they would receive new information after a few hours: the idea was to keep them in the waiting rooms to provoke their anger and to be able to spread the necessary images to mobilize the population against the controllers. How easy it is to orchestrate a media lynching when you have the necessary levers and lack scruples!

Some controllers may have given reasons to arouse such hostility - in all groups there are black sheep - but a dispassionate analysis of the facts and a reasonable discussion , which dispenses with cheap demagoguery, is required. This would be the proper thing to do in a mature democracy.