Aleix Sanmartín, a communication "guru" for the PP and a "penques" for the PSOE

MadridIn 2022, when Alberto Núñez Feijóo replaced Pablo Casado as president of the PP, he tried to sign the political consultant Aleix Sanmartín, who had previously worked with the popular Juanma Moreno, president of Andalusia for six years. "The PSOE came and offered him five times more," Feijóo's team recalls. Almost three years after a first attempt was frustrated, Génova has incorporated this expert in segmenting electoral messages with the aim of getting the votes they lacked in the last general elections to be able to govern. Sanmartín worked with the socialist leadership precisely during the 23-J campaign and, in view of the next elections, he will make the jump to the rival party.

The PP presents this signing as a stab at Sánchez. "It is a double victory. We improve and at the same time we take advantage of the PSOE," say sources from the popular leadership. According to Génova, Sanmartín likes to be on the winning team and is confident of political change in the State, as happened when he participated in the 2018 Andalusian campaign that ended 40 years of socialist governments. The PP has been in talks with him to hire him since the summer of last year, when he still had a contract with the socialists and had been participating for a few months in the campaign that brought Salvador Illa to the presidency of the Generalitat, a milestone that the consultant claims on the website as "his most recent success." "It was not difficult to convince him. He offered himself," the same PP sources maintain.

On the other hand, a socialist leader who has worked with this consultant calls him "blanket salesman", "monumental pencas", "unpresentable" and "mercenary". This explains why he has worked for the Socialist Party of the Valencian Community and for the Valencian PP, for Moreno in Andalusia, then for the PSOE in Ferraz and now Feijóo has signed him. "He has no principles or morals," say socialist sources to undermine the credibility of Sanmartín leaving the PSOE with the argument that he did not want to campaign for María Jesús Montero against Moreno in Andalusia next year. From Catalonia, Salvador Illa's entourage avoids confirming the consultant's role in the victory in last year's elections and limits itself to talking about the "contractual relationship" he had with the PSOE. The image that the socialists have contrasts with that of sources in the political consultancy sector consulted by the ARA, who define him as "one of the best" in Spain, who has received various prestigious awards in his field.

What is his role?

At the PP, Sanmartín will focus on segmenting messages, that is, designing which messages to introduce at key moments and detecting which sector of the population they should be delivered to. It is about personalizing who each campaign reaches and how it reaches them based on where more votes can be obtained. The consultant is already "100%" working for the PP after his contract with the PSOE ended in December. He has not yet installed in Génova the platform he uses to identify potential voters with specific propaganda, but he has already issued some reports. He will work as an external provider in collaboration with the electoral analysis team led by deputy secretary Elías Bendodo, former Andalusian councilor with whom he already coincided in Moreno's campaign. "It is an ambitious movement to strengthen us," they say to the PP, who specify that he will also contribute to the Castilla y León and Andalusia campaigns of 2026.

"He has specialised in the use of AI. That's what Trump is doing," notes a socialist voice, who at the time advised Ferraz against hiring him. The PP is focusing and, in parallel with the signing of Sanmartín, has created a new digital department to present battle on social networks with the use of data and AI. The current leadership of the PSOE also downplays his role and stresses that his only job was segmenting ads, but not their strategy. And, by no means, do they consider him to be a guru of Sánchez's campaign for June 23. However, the socialists' communication team boasted, especially before the campaign for the 2023 municipal and regional elections, of having this tool, which allowed them to select in great detail which message was sent to which audience.

Apart from the segmentation of messages, another of its techniques is negative advertising. That is, advertising that discredits the rival. Sanmartín worked the year 2022 for Carlos Mazón –who at that time had Daniel Sirera as head of cabinet, now a councillor in Barcelona– and he campaigned Smile, they're leaving now, where Ximo Puig, Mónica Oltra and Pedro Sánchez could be seen. It was a message copied from the campaigns of the Mexican Workers' Party, where he has made a career.