Toni Aira: "Pedro Sánchez is very good at finding antagonists."

BarcelonaJournalists and political scientists often compare politicians' current communication strategies with those of a few decades ago, but rarely do they compare them with references from more than 5,000 years ago. This is what journalist Toni Aira does in his new book, Mythologists: The Art of Seducing the Masses, the result of the "fusion of two passions": classical Greece and political communication. In both contexts, there have been "deceptions," says Aira, but he warns that although now "we think we are more informed," in reality "we are more manipulable than ever."

What does the word mean? mythologist?

— To the mythmakers. Myths don't emerge from nowhere. If you want to be a believer and believe that Zeus, Apollo, and Venus existed, you have every right, but everything points to it being a human construct. Therefore, those who, in ancient times, constructed stories that captivated and manipulated people are today's communications and strategy advisors.

Sánchez with Odysseus, Von der Leyen with Penelope, or Maduro with Hercules. What links these leaders to mythology?

— All the leaders in the book are successful leaders. Ultimately, they remain a portrait of their time, just like myths, which were born to portray the human condition of their time and world. The myths that impact us or that remain in history are those with which we identify most and that portray us best, especially visually, and because of how the story they tell speaks to us. Political leaders today generate identification with the masses primarily in these two ways: with images and with emotions.

How does the image-based and self-exaltation culture influence current politics?

— We live so hooked on permanent change, on the culture ofscroll, which leads us to be able to focus our attention less and less on a single thing. So, those who aspire to capture a few moments of that attention to tell us that you should vote for them, must increasingly raise their voice and do more shocking things that shake you up. From there emerge the political boom-bang-bang and the disruptive and grotesque characters who seek to take us out of our permanent distraction and get us to notice them at a given moment. That's why in the book I talk about the celibrification, because these characters are like celebrities that, above all, give you play. Now, it is not the same to choose a character from Big Brother or ofEuphoria because it is a game to choose a Trump or a Meloni.

Regarding this use of emotions and psychology, he gives the example of Sánchez's tour of Spain in his Peugeot in 2016, when he resigned as secretary general of the PSOE. He compares it to Odysseus's reconquest. Why?

— Sánchez toured Spain by car, seeking out people's concerns, which reminds me a lot of Odysseus's adventure when he returns to Ithaca. That idea of saying: "Okay, I've been dethroned, there are usurpers who are trying to remove me from here, and with humility I will appeal to the base and thus I will be able to win people over." He is a leader who is very good at finding antagonists. He did so then, contrasting himself with Susana Díaz, who had the support of Felipe González or Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba; later he found antagonism in the corruption of the PP and took out Mariano Rajoy; and, later, he gave Ayuso a boost in contrast to what he did with Casado, because he needed a villain clearly opposed to him, and the state leader of the PP didn't allow him to make the contrast as obvious as the Madrid leader. He knows how to reinvent the perfect enemy against whom he is the great hero.

Could there come a point where appealing to emotions and image—not just in Sánchez's case, but in politics in general—reaches its limit?

— I believe we're close to reaching that limit of spectacle politics. I see it as difficult to fall any lower without consequences, as it is having. In a country like ours, in Catalonia, or in Spain, the ultimate consequence would be that the people who have played this most skillfully with a more extreme populism end up in power. And this will have consequences that will generate a rebound effect, because often, as the Buddhists said, we need to die to be reborn.