The kiss of Sanchez that everything it can

The only thing missing was Ángela Carrasco blaring through the speakers with those shrieks that said “si tu eres mi hooombreee y yo tu mujeeeer, donde quieras que estés amooor, contigo estarééé”. Pedro Sánchez’s kiss to Begoña Gómez is one of the campaign’s images, and most newspapers included it on their front page. The scene, being prefabricated, had a touch of discomfort and, in the wide shots showing the crowd applauding that display of intimate affection, also a dose of political pornography. Perhaps that is why the headline in El País (“Sánchez puts Begoña into the campaign”) expressed a certain discomfort and was identical to that of El Mundo.

But the most interesting thing was to note that this rehearsed kiss –she in a passionate bright red and the socialist red rose, which contrasted with the grays and blacks of the flock of boring blazers– achieved much more generous space in newspapers like El Mundo and ABC, rather than in El País or La Vanguardia, with the latter two being much kinder to Pedro Sánchez. This paradox is explained by so-called rage bait, which is that clickbait whose main engine is not curiosity, but rage. Right-wing newspapers put the photo up big because they know it will stir up their (e)lectorate. One only has to see how ABC headlines “Sánchez turns his indicted wife into an electoral draw,” which offers a 2-for-1 of anger, since the message they convey is: the leader of the PSOE is laughing in our faces and the corruption is so unashamed that they even make a banner of it. In any case, the magic of this kiss –which is nothing more than a revival of that famous public love letter to his wife– is that Sánchez has the cave dancing to the music he plays. Let us remember that letter to the citizenry and the famous passage: “I am not ashamed to say it, I am a man deeply in love with my wife who lives with the helplessness of seeing how they drag her through the mud day after day.” Beat that, Ángela Carrasco!