Torre Pacheco, Mexico or India: the times a manipulated video lit the fuse

It's unlikely that by now you don't know what happened in Torre Pacheco . A video showing the brutal beating of a man spread like wildfire on the phones of thousands of Spaniards. The message accompanying this content claimed that this was a retelling of another incident that occurred on July 9th , involving a resident of the town of Murcia. The post also claimed that the attackers were North African immigrants. However, both the people in the video and the other victim in Torre Pacheco denied this .

Although the post was fake , far-right groups distributed this and similar videos to stir up tension and violence in the Murcia enclave. This isn't the first time a video taken out of context has had fatal consequences . Noise is a business; we saw it after the DANA in Valencia and the wave of bots posting misleading messages on X. Lucía Díaz, a fact-checker at AFP Factual, and Marcelino Madrigal, an intelligence analyst, warn us that what's happened in Murcia in recent days is not an anomaly .

In the video at the top of this article, we analyze this case and those that have preceded it, how these types of practices seek to erode the stability of democratic systems , polarize and manipulate society, and we offer some tips on how to avoid falling for the lies that are spread daily on the internet.