Forget about policy debates at Spain's general election: it's an 8-week political knife fight
Lies, manipulation, dirt, insults, accusations and balls.
“LIES”, wrote the Spanish Socialist Party on its Twitter feed on Tuesday, just hours after Sánchez called the snap general election, with a video reel of the PP and ETA, the PP and the Prestige oil slick, the PP and the Madrid train bombings, the PP and Yak-42 plane crash, and the PP and corruption: “"The PP has come clean and confirmed that’s what they want for Spain”. “Holidays?”, wondered the young conservatives in Madrid on their account yesterday, with a photo of Pedro Sánchez and his wife sunning themselves on a beach, after the PM announced the snap election for the end of July: “BOLLOCKS”.
The gloves are still off. Nobody bothered putting them back on after the local and regional election campaign. The intense slugging of the other side will continue, but now even harder. The next eight weeks are not going to be for the faint hearted, so it’s perhaps best that the feeble Ciudadanos leadership sits this one out, and the woke culture cancellers on the far-left are going to be in for a rough ride through to the end of July. Political animals on both sides, though, are in their element, suddenly energised again at the unexpected prospect of a new bout, now with even bigger, more exciting stakes. It’s sudden-death penalties at the end of a football match. Perhaps that explains Edmundo Bal’s frustrated railing at his Ciudadanos bosses yesterday: he wants to be in the fight, to make a stand for his voters, but they just sidelined the whole team.
Sánchez publicly harangued his parliamentary party yesterday. Despite their defeat on Sunday, they applauded him as if Madrid were Pyongyang. “This is going to be a huge storm”, he told them, and Spaniards will be served an election-day lunch of “dirt, insults and lies”. Spanish conservatives are the same as the far-right, he continued, framing his snap election as the next battle in a global ideological war. The PM believes the right in Spain is copying Trump’s tactics in the US, Orban’s in Hungary or Bolsonaro’s in Brazil: “Spain is not immune to that reactionary wave but Spain can stop it”. Voters, he insisted, now face a choice: “We have to clear up if Spanish men and women, when they travel abroad, want to be proud of being from one of the first countries that legalised marriage for all or if they want to travel to boast about being homophobic”.
“He’s decided to get down in the mud”, said Popular Party spokeswoman Cuca Gamarra: “he is absolutely podemised [become like Podemos]”. “Between Sánchez and Podemos, there are no longer any differences”, she added on Twitter, “but between Sánchez and Spain, Spaniards are clear about what to do: Spain”. PP leader Feijóo said he wanted to stay above “frivolous, deceitful, divisive” clashes and “get back to good politics”. He will be disappointed. Sánchez was “a liar and an autocrat”, tweeted Vox leader Abascal, “fully contemptuous of the popular will and showing signs of messianic delirium”. “Don’t lie, you traitor”, added the party’s deputy leader, Ortega Smith, “what Spain does not look like is a Prime Minister who kneels before terrorists, helps separatists and is subject to communists”.
Election day will be a choice between “rights in Spain or the far-rights in Spain”, tweeted the PSOE. “I wish we could have governed with that PSOE”, tweeted Podemos leader Ione Belarra, after four years of coalition government with the PSOE, “that would have stopped the reactionary wave more effectively”. So a giant ideological fist fight it is then, to club the other side into submission. The big bad monster for the left is a global wave of Trumpian far-right reactionary national populism and voters need to stop it. The big bad monster for the right is Sánchez and voters just need to kick him out of office and put Spain back in order. What will they choose?
Thanks for reading. Subscribe now:
🔥 Understand the stories changing Spain better
📝 All the articles
💪 Guarantee this independent analysis & commentary
Homophobic, obvs.
Well I think you should perhaps mention the overtly homophonic nature of the term ‘podemita’, and the PP’s constant equation of any opposition to them with Communism (Libertad o Comunismo, Srta Ayuso, really?). But I don’t expect that level of critical thinking here.