First media movements after Sánchez's announcement

Surprise! Well, not so much, okay. The early election had been hovering over newsrooms for some time, but it is always interesting to analyze digital front pages, because they offer more immediate and, above all, less meditated reactions than the next day's front pages, where the messages are already much more distilled. From this barrage of raw stimuli, the most prominent –because it is the most dangerous– is the irresponsible dissemination of the idea of future electoral fraud with the results. “Abascal urges not to vote by mail in case they manage to "manipulate the process"”, reports the newspaper Abc on its home page. A political leader has said it and, therefore, it must be explained. But playing along with this uncritical game imposes on the Spanish elections the Trumpian template of (false) electoral fraud that is still an open wound in the country. El País, for example, notes that the President of the Community of Madrid is also playing this card, but explains it critically, with the headline: “Ayuso shakes the ghost of electoral fraud”.

It is not only a future event like the vote count that is being questioned. OK Diario delegitimizes Sánchez with the piece: “First trap of the campaign: the government approves tomorrow the repealed major decrees so that the Permanent Deputation validates them without Junts”. El Mundo goes even further: “Sánchez, willing to skirt the fraud of law by bringing the two failed housing decrees to the Permanent Deputation of Congress”. Certainly, there is the usual trickery on the part of the PSOE leader, but talking about a trap suggests illegality, and the fact that it links it to the election campaign, once again, makes the shadow of stolen elections loom, if the poll results are not ultimately met. These nerves, in fact, suggest that perhaps they fear that the PSOE will get too close to the PP's seats and the alliance they crave with Vox in the name of a (wrongly called) government of order will be frustrated.