Plato formulated the myth of the cave as an allegory of what the lack of education meant in people. Chained and with their backs to the outside, the prisoners only knew the world through the shadows that a fire cast on the wall in front of them. Thus, their reality was reduced to black and white without nuances, without volumes, without identities.
Perhaps the Platonic myth served to call the darkest, least sensible, least cultured part of Spain. Or perhaps whoever created that nickname was simply thinking of prehistoric times, when the first humans lived in caves. In any case, it has the same meaning. There is even talk of the media cave, to refer to the media that stop doing journalism to adopt extreme attitudes, especially with respect to the disqualification of the rival.
Insults and nicknames characterize the language of these extreme speeches, normally associated with the extreme right, and more typical of a bar counter. Even former president Rajoy was the object of these insults, because he was considered too lukewarm in some decisions.
But last Sunday it was Pedro Sánchez who released an expression more typical of the cave than the speech to which the socialists and the left are accustomed: fachosphere. In the La Vanguardia interview, it was the Spanish president himself who defined this new word: “What it does is polarize, insult, generate distrust with a clear purpose. The right has a shipwreck of ideas. They are parasitized by the extreme right. How can they overthrow a legitimate government of two leftist parties? Creating noise to demobilize the electorate and provoke political disaffection among voters.”
The neologism is a word formed by the composition of the sphere face, and responds to a new lexical trend that began with machosfera. This word is, in my opinion, an improved version of the English mansphere, and refers to those areas where machismo continues to prevail in the public sphere.
The appearance of fachosfera in this interview provides double information. On the one hand, the discourse of the left is being contaminated by the disqualifications of the right. And on the other hand, much more worrying, that, to fit all the openly manifest fascism in Spain, the cave has become too small; now an entire sphere is needed.
