Almost 400 podcast episodes later, a resident of Bages might hold in his hands one of the keys to connecting with the youth vote in the upcoming general elections. Jordi Wild, or Jorge Carrillo de Albornoz Torres (Manresa, 1984), has turned The Wild Project into one of the benchmark podcasts of the digital ecosystem in Spanish. Now, a few weeks before the elections, the content creator has managed to get Pedro Sánchez, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Ada Colau, and Santiago Abascal to agree to step up to his microphones. The four interviews will be published on November 13, in a gamble that places a youtuber at the center of the communication strategy of the main candidates for Moncloa.

Last Sunday, Brazil extended the polls by two hours due to public transport problems reported by the campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who ended up winning the presidential election. In Israel, this Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party also asked to extend polling hours on a day marked by rain, although the country's electoral committee rejected it (even though it assured that everyone who had arrived at the polling stations before 10 p.m. would be allowed to vote even if the deadline had already passed). Both Netanyahu and Lula were interested in the highest possible turnout, especially from the areas that traditionally support them most.

More than half a hundred constituencies, dozens of parties and three maps so you don't get lost among the ballots. The Official State Gazette (BOE) published this Wednesday the candidacies for Congress for the general elections of November 29th. Although the parties, coalitions, and electoral groups can still file allegations, the electoral board already outlines the options that citizens will find at the polls in the 52 constituencies.

“They say it’s good, I’ve read it”. This is how Alberto Núñez Feijóo defended on Friday the mysterious community manager of the PP, who has become one of the great protagonists of the November 29th electoral pre-campaign. With a combative, ruthless, ironic, and daring style, the popular party’s posts on Instagram, TikTok, and X have gone viral rapidly and have been able to make an appearance in conventional media. The one that has had the most resonance is a video made with artificial intelligence, seen by more than two million people on X, in which Begoña Gómez, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and Santos Cerdán, among others, appear admitting to the facts for which they are being investigated. It is what is known as a deepfake. “Having a chair thanks to the fact that my husband is the president”, says Pedro Sánchez’s wife. “Hiding jewels in a safe”, expresses the former Spanish president. “Belonging to a criminal gang”, verbalizes the former number 3 of the PSOE. Leire Díez also appears, who has filed a lawsuit against the PP for the crimes of slander with publicity, attack on moral integrity, and digital identity theft.

She had never considered dedicating herself to politics. Now she is the new head of the PSC list for Lleida in the general elections of November 29th. "In my life, everything is the result of coincidences," explains Cristina Morón (Lleida, 1979) with a laugh. For several years, she was the point person for the dependency law at the Lleida City Council, where she worked as a social worker. After a conversation with Fèlix Larrosa, she received an offer to enter municipal politics. Now, a new unexpected proposal has changed her plans once again: "It was four-thirty in the afternoon and I received a WhatsApp call from a number I did not have registered, and it says: 'I am Salvador Illa, can you talk?'", explains Morón regarding the conversation in which she was proposed to head the PSC list for Lleida in Congress, after the resignation of Montse Mínguez. The decision came to her with little time to think it over, half an hour before the party's national council began. "Imagine how my heart was pounding," she recalls in conversation with the ARA.

As happened three years ago, the right-wing bloc starts with an advantage in the general election race. There is approximately one month left until the elections, and the average for the PP and Vox is situated above 190 seats, comfortably above the 176 that mark an absolute majority: demoscopy predicts a slight fall for the Popular Party, theoretically compensated by the rise of the extreme right. But as also happened in 2023, as the election day approaches, the distance pointed out by the demographic studies is narrowing. Campaigns suit Pedro Sánchez better than Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Do the left—and its sovereignist partners—have room to turn the results around?

The Spanish political debate increasingly resembles sports talk shows or social chronicles. And you, who are you with? With the squatters or the large property holders? What an absurd dilemma! But if we reach the maximum synthesis of electoral offers, as presented to us on social media, it seems we are driven to this kind of Manichaeism. And we cannot afford it: We have two enormous challenges ahead, which are housing and immigration. Both are intimately related, and have to do with the Problem with a capital P, which is the impoverishment of the middle and lower classes, and the bankruptcy of public services. It is a question of economic model, but for the parties, the pundits, and the influencers it is easier and more comfortable to reduce it to a cultural issue, of values. Equality/freedom. Order/disorder. Identity/diversity. Broncano/Motos. And here at home, too, Spain/Catalonia. Or Hispanicity/Catalanicity. Or Islam/Orriols.

The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun (Barcelona, 1982), visits the ARA newsroom a few days after it was made public that he will be number 2 on the Sumar candidacy for Barcelona in the upcoming general elections.

Whenever there is talk of the far-right as a "new" phenomenon or it is presented to us as a radical, sudden novelty, we should be deeply skeptical. One only needs to consider that the first breakthrough of the first Le Pen of the early French FN dates back to the distant year of 1984 in the European Parliament. It obtained 11% of the votes, more than two million votes and ten parliamentary seats –today the far-right parties already occupy 25% of the Eurochamber and Marine Le Pen is ready to contest her fourth presidential election–. In 1992, when memory burns, shelters for refugees were already being set on fire in Rostock –and today the AfD is the leading force in Saxony-Anhalt, with 44% of the vote–. In the early nineties –1991, 1992, 1993– the fascism that did not wear a tie was still murdering Lucrecia Pérez in Madrid, Sonia Rescalvo in Barcelona and Guillem Agulló in Montanejos –and now the beatings of migrants wear a military uniform in Ceuta–. At the end of the 90s, the Italian MSI of Gianfranco Fini, already converted into the National Alliance, was entering the incipient governments of Berlusconi, and Fini himself, il fascista del Duemila, would end up being vice president and minister of Foreign Affairs. Today Meloni governs the Italian state with a plenipotentiary vocation and announces an authoritarian electoral reform in the name of governability.

For days, the Broad Front and Podemos have been blaming each other for the failure of left-wing unity ahead of November 29th. The candidacy led by Ada Colau boasts of having brought together fifteen different parties under its banner, although the four main parties have been the ones leading the way: Comuns, Sumar, Más Madrid, and United Left (IU). Now there will be fourteen, as confirmed by ARA, because one of the two sects that had joined has pulled out of the Broad Front. The Humanist Party, founded in 1984 under the umbrella of the IU—and which left two years later amidst accusations of sectarianism—, has finally rejected the offer after consulting its membership.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo is doubling down on his commitment to project an image of a forceful PP against Pedro Sánchez – also in response to the rise of Vox – and has chosen to place one of the party's harshest and most incendiary voices in the number two spot on the list for Madrid. Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo (Madrid, 1974) ascends to this position ahead of November 29th, in an election that she herself defines as "existential, historic, and decisive" for the future of Spain. The PP leader confirmed his choice this Thursday after days of hints that already suggested he would bet on a profile that has been characterized as an internal loose cannon. Álvarez de Toledo deploys her own sharp, ideological discourse which, in previous stages, she has not hesitated to direct even against her own party's leadership, as happened with Pablo Casado, with whom she ended up in conflict.

Duralex endures. Just like its products. The brand does not break. Even though in the last two decades it has been in insolvency proceedings five times and now, that it was in danger again, it has been saved once more from closure to begin a new stage. Duralex advertised itself as tableware “practically unbreakable” and it was. It did not deceive. They devised an innovative technique that consisted of heating the glass a lot and then cooling it down rapidly. Thus, they made it much more resistant. And if many homes still have vestiges of Duralex, it is because, effectively, it has withstood many onslaughts and endured them. But does it make sense to cling to a brand that was very useful in the 60s and 70s, when it was alone in its field? Objectively, nowadays there is a wide and better offer than the traditional Duralex. What do we want, then, from nostalgia? And what nostalgia is salvageable?

Two Catalans, Ada Colau and Gabriel Rufián, come to the rescue of the Spanish left. 

Spain celebrates its national holiday this Monday just after being called to elections in which the right and the far-right (if the redundancy may be excused) present themselves thirsty for revenge and the socialist centre-left and the left (if the Spanish national redundancy may be excused) will repeat the “No pasarán” of the most dramatic contemporary Spain.

"For my birthday I want a Bad Bunny figure, an Anuel AA one, or one of Gabriel Rufián". The girl asking for it won't be able to vote on November 29th (for any of the three), because she is only thirteen years old, but at her high school she doesn't need to give many details for her 2nd year ESO classmates to know who she is talking about. Two world music stars and a politician, the one who has the most appeal among young people (and not so young). Although he began his political career in 2015, Rufián is experiencing a second youth in Madrid. Having become the preferred leader for left-wing voters (only Pedro Sánchez overshadows him) and the best-rated in polls (in Spain and in Catalonia), he is currently the most coveted candidate: for ERC, for the Broad Front, and for Podemos. The vote-mobilizing potential of his speech is not disputed by anyone, but, consolidated as a free spirit, the tensions within his party have been growing to the point of becoming a big enough problem that his continuity has been called into question.