Initial desire: that the face-to-face be less exhausting than the previous semiotic overdose. Infected by this epidemic, Minister Félix Bolaños said that the PP represents “dandy Spain.” Bolaños perhaps does not realize that there is nothing more dandy than the adjective dandy. Vicente Vallés and Ana Pastor dispatched the rules of the game (timer, blocks) as the aircraft crews attend to the safety ritual. What is at stake is transcendent, but it may not be necessary to add more tension. A tension that has more to do with a media overinterpretation of politics than with the reality of the debate. A debate that begins with an accelerated, condescending, tense Pedro Sánchez with touches of overly artificial humor. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on the other hand, entrenches himself in a catenaccio of sober contempt (when Sánchez speaks, he does not even look at him). This situates the debate in a fencing of accusations that tends to stridency and discredit – it no longer comes from here – of the dialogue. Candidates cross data with a schoolyard rigor. The split screen summarizes the drama of a bipartisanship –PP and PSOE– responsible for almost all of Spain’s problems.
The acceleration of Sánchez, who gesticulates and interrupts, weakens him and forces Vallés to redirect him and update that Olympic “athletes, get off the stage”. Every time Feijóo tells him “don’t get nervous”, Sánchez goes on to grimace and gibberish, which do not respect the viewer’s attention, and affirms that he is not nervous but indignant. Yesterday’s Sánchez must be aware of losing his temper. This is the only way to explain why, outraged or not, he persists in interrupting and compulsively reproaching, that he attacks by spraying and that he does not realize that affirming that the PP and Vox are the same is a desperate resource.
The feeling is that Feijóo does not need to convince anyone. It is enough for him to upset his rival to, without making feasible proposals, question five years of Government. When Sánchez claims the job done, Feijóo also interrupts him, but in a more subtle way (he never talks about the war in Ukraine or the aftermath of the pandemic).
After the publicity, Sánchez does not recover his institutional dignity and does not control the time of the discussion or the emotional administration of his convictions. When he recovers a certain argumentative balance –on the PP pacts, the threat embodied by the right-wing parties or speaking of Catalonia– it is already too late. If it is true that this face to face will be decisive, you just have to imagine the wave that will cause his hangover. A wave that will favor the PP more than Vox and that will perpetuate interruption, outburst and confusion as the instruments that will define the media and political landscape of the coming days.
Ah, it is confirmed: the final minute of requesting the vote while looking at the camera is torture for the candidate, who submits to inhuman levels of embarrassment. It is also true for the spectators, who, if they began to decide their vote, could once again think about abstaining after feeling legitimately disappointed by yesterday’s face-to-face (well managed by Atresmedia). Desperate reflection: even if the candidates disappoint, the alternative to parliamentary democracy is always worse.
