In the last few hours, numerous journalists have responded to threats from the leader of the Desokupa company, Daniel Esteve, against the journalists and coordinators of the Equipo de Investigación programme, which is preparing a report on him. Esteve has been recording and publishing videos for several days in which he boasts of having obtained personal data from both the La Sexta journalists and their families: “I already have with my CNI of followers addresses, telephone numbers, where they take their children to school, addresses of their second residences…”, says Esteve, laughing, in one of his videos. “You don’t know what’s coming to you, seriously,” he says before stating that he has contacted a group of squatters who have shown their intention to illegally raid the second homes of the programme’s workers.
One of the first to react was the journalist and contributor to Todo es Mentira Sarah Santaolalla, who said she received “threats, insults, harassment and a lot of virtual violence” every time she appeared on television to talk about Esteve. “I am not surprised that today the head of the mafia warns that he is going to go after all of us,” she said. in a post on social network Xresponding to an initial complaint by the secretary general of Facua, Rubén Sánchez, who shared one of the videos of the Desokupa leader on X. The retired journalist Rosa Villacastín also reacted to the threats asking himself “and what does the police say about this?”, to which he added: “It’s pure mafia.”
Other journalists like Angel Munarriz (The Country), Adolfo Arias (Four), Enrique Clemente (The Voice of Galicia), Manuel Cuellar (Amazing), David Bollero (Public) the Marco Schwartz (elDiario.es) have also questioned Daniel Esteve’s threats or the recent agreement with the police union SUP for the training of police officers in self-defence techniques. Adolfo Arias, a reporter for Cuatro who also appeared on the programme Equipo de Investigación, also sent support to his former colleagues.
Facua spokesman, Rubén Sánchez, has also participated in A chat with journalist Jesús Cintora in which the journalist and presenter of television programmes such as Las mañanas de Cuatro or Las cosas claras has declared having also received insults and threats: “They have been threatening me privately for some time, serious threats,” explained Cintora.
Sánchez assured that some media “have created a monster”, but he framed Esteve’s videos in “fear”: “that video is the result of fear, of knowing that the Investigation Team is going to publish things that have never come to light,” said Rubén Sánchez, who highlighted that Esteve himself has confirmed that he has a criminal record in one of his videos. Precisely, it was the La Sexta program that, in 2020, confirmed that the founder of Desokupa had Police record for nightclub fights (he was a security guard) or extortion.
This Thursday, the Association of Investigative Journalists (API) described the threats published by Daniel Esteve against the journalists of La Sexta and their families as “absolutely intolerable.” It sent them its support and requested that the authorities “take action on the matter.”
Hours later, on Friday, September 13, the Federation of Associations of Journalists of Spain (FAPE) has “strongly” condemned the threats launched by Daniel Esteve against the professionals of Equipo de Investigación and their families. In a statement, the entity has described these threats as “intolerable”, whose “sole objective”, it says, is “to prevent the production and dissemination of a programme in what constitutes an attack on the free exercise of journalism” and has supported the API’s request to require the authorities to take action on the matter.
This is not the first time that journalists or media collaborators have reported receiving direct threats from Daniel Esteve or his followers when dealing with the Desokupa issue. In August, the police officer and regular contributor to the program En boca de todos Carlos Segarra has already revealed the hatred and threats he was receiving through social networksAfter confronting the leader of the eviction company during an interview on the Cuatro programme, she received attacks “on a personal and professional level” as well as insults that she said she did not understand, “all of them based on anonymity and many saying they are police officers”.
