Wave of criticism against TV3 for saying that promoting having children is far-right

TV3's official account posted a message on social media yesterday titled "Pronatalism, the global movement resurging under the protection of the far right." The text, taken from a report published on 3Cat's website, labeled the political push to raise birth rates as "misogynistic and racist." In less than 24 hours, the post surpassed 250,000 views and nearly reached 500 comments, most of them highly critical.3cat

Among the responses, messages stand out such as "Catalonia on the verge of demographic collapse and TV3 engaging in sensationalism" or "How many children do you need to have to be considered far right?" Others accused the public channel of hiding and censoring comments, a common practice that consists of censoring comments and then opening them up again to leave no trace. "Poor intern who has to hide responses," one user said:

A demographic debate that TV3 avoids

The criticism comes as official data confirm the decline in birth rates in Catalonia. In 2024, 53,793 babies (53,793) were born, 0.8% less than the previous year, and the crude birth rate fell to 2.6 per 1,000 inhabitants (6.7 per 1,000), a historic low. The fertility rate stood at 1.08 children per woman, far from the 2.1 needed for generational replacement.

However, TV3's report focuses almost exclusively on the "supremacist component" of some pronatalist groups in the United States and Eastern Europe. The piece includes statements from academics who link any natalist agenda with "eliminating women's right to choose" and "protecting the nation from immigrants." As usual, this is done without clarifying the differences between family support policies and xenophobic rhetoric.

Parallel to all this, if anything is clear, it's that demographic decline along with migratory flows are a source of deep social tension in the West. In fact, in Catalonia, the elephant in the room is that, with this exogenous population growth, social services can't keep up. In fact, some Catalan mayors have already put forward the need to address this debate in a serious way.

However, TV3 doesn't move away from polarizing ideological categories like "fascism" or "far right." At the same time, they don't make it explicit that this strategy is itself the face of another political position, even if it pretends to be journalistic information. In any case, TV3 has already lost the citizen respect it once had.