The PP muddies the pre-campaign on social media with a video of Minister Puente hurting his knee

The People's Party is already muddying the electoral pre-campaign. And the chosen strategy, common among the right-wing, is to opt for social media. This Monday, the same day that Pedro Sánchez called early general elections for November 29th, the PP published a video on X against the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente. The tweet was a response to a post by the socialist in which he claimed that Feijóo "was already feeling the fear." The reaction of the populars was to publish a video from when the minister tore his quadriceps in 2023: "You were the one who was afraid of a sprain," they wrote.

In the images, one can see, but above all feel, Puente's cries of pain. The minister fell while visiting a construction site when he was mayor of Valladolid, in the Parquesol neighborhood, three years ago. The injury, in fact, came at a very bad time, with two weeks left until the start of the 2023 electoral campaign. Feijóo's team chose to publish this incident on social media and thus ignite the pre-campaign for the 29-N. Users have already indignantly commented on the dirty play of the conservatives and have stressed that the minister had suffered a quadriceps tendon rupture, a trauma that forced him to be admitted to the hospital.

For his part, Puente has responded to the PP by calling them "miserable": "They are the worst scum in this country," he wrote on X, and also attached a photo of the knee injury. On the other hand, he has asserted that Feijóo is the "most vile and miserable" politician in 50 years of democracy.

Social networks are the great bastion of the right to give reach to their speeches, with posts common against immigration, feminism, and social rights. Sánchez's announcement of an early election has acted as a fuse for these types of publications, and another example is a post from Nuevas Generaciones de España, the youth wing of the PP. In view of the election call, they chose to publish with a "Them or us", with an image of the migrants who arrived in Ceuta in July.

The far right also joins in criticizing the Spanish government and making a bonfire of the announcement, as well as sowing doubts about the veracity of the elections, insinuating the possibility that the PSOE might carry out electoral fraud. Vox, in this sense, has published a series of images demanding "clean elections" and asking Spaniards "to go vote in person". A clamor that was also made by Isabel Díaz Ayuso on Monday, when she asked citizens not to even think about "voting by mail".

Discrediting and sowing doubts about the November elections is the main strategy of the right-wing ahead of a campaign expected to be muddy. Hot topics are not in short supply: rents, the migration crisis that still persists in Ceuta, and the PSOE's legal cases will be key amidst a social weariness that demands urgent measures in the face of the housing crisis that the State is experiencing.