Loose cotton against the ultra drift of the PP

In politics, dancing to someone else's tune usually leads to problems and twisted ankles. The PP has long been trying to stop the hemorrhage of votes towards Vox and, in its graceless and uncoordinated gesticulation to follow this frantic cha-cha-cha, it only widens the dance floor for Abascal and his followers to puff out their chests, Saturday Night Live style. The press plays a role in all of this, of course. And so, we find that this Friday El País took advantage of the signing of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo to write: “Feijóo reinforces the lists with profiles from the hard wing and regional positions”. On the other hand, in El Mundo the front page was very different and the headline was “Feijóo combines with Álvarez de Toledo and Sémper the two souls of the PP on the lists”. The contrast of keywords is evident: hard and souls. The whitewashing of the most extreme positions and the politics of resentment also happens through a semantic sterilization of the concepts.

In fact, the campaign is the great festival of euphemisms and propositions –or headlines– that have double and triple readings. When El País wrote, also on Friday and on the front page, that “The PSOE accepts a head-to-head debate between the candidates on November 16th” it was doing so to be able to explain that, on the other hand, Feijóo is vetoing the four-way debate –with Abascal and Colau– that RTVE is trying to organize. Days of negotiations and crossed vetoes regarding these debates will come, while the charisma campaign is played out on La Revuelta, on El Hormiguero and on Jordi Wild's YouTube interviews. Television stations have been too submissive in accepting the parties' dictates for electoral debates, and this has made them increasingly ineffective programs as a way of deciding the vote. Too many blocks, stopwatches, and empty formalities, which do not even work in favor of content density. It is normal that formats selling a false (or at least feigned) genuineness are sweeping the board.