The slogan that won the municipal and regional elections was not “Ganas”, the elegant official slogan of the people of Madrid, but what they called Pedro Sánchez at the electoral college, the shared and unofficial slogan of Vox and PP: “Let Txapote vote for you”. This sentence with consonant rhyme and little logic is insolent, catchy, aggressive and offensive, pure Spanish alt-right.
He was born last September 3 in Seville, when someone wrote it on a poster for a Sánchez event. There is no previous trace and it is credible that this is the case: the approach of the étarra to the Basque Country had been announced not long ago. Three days later he was in the background at a Vox press conference. Some right-wing media celebrated it instantly. At the end of January, a man who had to be interviewed for a fine called it out live on RTVE. At the beginning of February, Ayuso mentioned it to the Madrid Assembly: the elections were already about ETA. Later it became known that the spontaneous TV personality had collaborated with Vox for years as a photographer.
From that moment the message was unstoppable. The sentence was pronounced by Esperanza Aguirre, and also by Ortega Smith. They told Reyes Maroto by Sant Isidre and Juan Lobato by the street. The New Generations of the PP rented a van with the message. T-shirts with the slogan were sold. The networks and certain media were flooded with it.
On TikTok it is easy to see how the phrase went viral and how the videos that were born afterwards, many on this same platform, others generated in other places on the internet and redistributed there. Of all the videos, there is one that has an impact because it shows a daughter recording her mother at the polling station. The woman enters the vote, looks at the camera and says: “Que te vote Txapote” while the daughter feels herself bursting into laughter. It has had 600,000 views in 24 hours.
When looking at comments, TikTok suggests the most popular search that users have done after viewing the images. In this case they searched for “who is Txapote”. The old man has been in prison for 22 years, perhaps since before some of those who watched, commented, broadcast, recorded, laughed and voted influenced by these videos were born.
