Madrid

🥊 This Week in Spain: Debatably Disappointing

Also a socialite's wedding, a bull-running tragedy, and more gnarly political banners.

By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | July 13, 2023 | Madrid | Issue #22

🎉 Welcome to The Tapa, an English-language, weekly newsletter about all things Spain!

🥜 This Week in a Nutshell: It was debate night on Monday and most pundits agree it was a mess. Also, we’re now 10 days away from the elections and in the midst of a heat wave so expect people to complain even more about voting in the middle of summer.

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Liar, liar, pants on fire

More Heat Than Light at the Only, Nasty Debate

Monday night at the family-friendly time of 10 p.m. Spanish TV offered voters the one and only chance to watch PSOE socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and poll-leading center-right Partido Popular (PP) candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo sit face-to-face across a table and interrupt each other. It was advertised as a debate, though that is far too highfalutin a word for what we saw. “Ill-tempered cage match between two men in suits”, perhaps? 

• The pre-match prediction was for a knockout. The debate-hardened Sánchez was expected to wipe the floor with the gaffe-prone Núñez Feijóo, much like he had with right-of-center TV interviewers like Pablo Motos on El Hormiguero. The question was, would Núñez Feijóo live to keep some sort of lead—and fight another day?

• But that so did not happen. The debate went badly enough for Sánchez that even a substantial minority of his own PSOE voters (22%) thought he lost the debate. ERC pol Gabriel Rufián, who has supported Sánchez against the PP and Vox, said he was “surprised” to see Sánchez “disorderly, slow or off pitch” compared to a “fast” Feijóo who, “practically the whole world thought won.”

Ultimately, there was a lot of yelling, accusations of lying and (for those of us not on the stage) the sensation of a missed opportunity.

So what exactly happened?

• Sánchez repeatedly accused the PP and Vox of “being the same” (“Scary, scary, vote for me!”) while Feijóo insisted that Sánchez was buddies with the political descendents of ETA terrorists (“Scary, scary, vote for me!”). The PP boss also insisted they both sign a document (which he had brought with him, conveniently) in which they would commit to allowing the most voted party to govern—a kinda cynical ask that would allow PP to lead without having to form a coalition with Vox, and would not allow other parties to form a majority.

And what does this mean for the last 10 days of the campaign?

• Of course, all we can do is guess. But the blame game within the PSOE came quick and cruel. Some said Sánchez didn’t rehearse the face-to-face format (or “sparring”) enough. Others that expectations were so high for Sánchez that it favored Feijóo.

• Others simply said Núñez Feijóo was so effective in the first few minutes of the debate, in which they discussed the economy (supposedly Sánchez’s strong point as it’s done well, all things considered), by spewing data non-stop, sometimes presenting “false data” (aka lies), that it made Sánchez “nervous” and didn’t let him “find his rhythm”.

• Socialist party leaders told El País they believe “Feijóo wanted to muddy the waters from the very beginning, and he succeeded. The leader of the PSOE was left bewildered, unable to deliver his messages even in the most favorable block for him.”

Now that we’re getting really close to election day, Núñez Feijóo is capitalizing on his debate performance by mocking Sánchez in political rallies.

• “Why does he need 800 advisers? Why did he prepare for four days? For what? For nothing!” Núñez Feijóo said.

• Sánchez responded to Núñez Feijóo’s debate statements, while speaking at the NATO summit in Vilnius, by saying the PP leader employed a “mountain of lies” in the debate (he’s not entirely wrong about this).

• So..not friends? Right. Sánchez will continue to work on scaring voters by saying. the PP is Vox, while Núñez Feijóo will work on acting like the boring centrist who may have to bring a hard-right party into the gov but can handle it (“Don’t worry—they won’t have the power to do anything. Really!”).

Polls taken in the days immediately after the debate found that the PP rose and the PSOE dropped by several seats, but the race still remains very tight. Expect a close election where the two questions are 1) do the PP and Vox, together, win enough seats to form a majority, and 2) if so, how close is the PP to the 176 needed? If they have 150, they will need to give Vox much less power than if they have 135. Exciting times!

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties this week

1. 💒 You may now kiss the bride scan the very expensive wedding photos

Spain’s media association is hopping mad! The AMI (Asociación de Medios de Información) says a Spanish magazine has just suffered “the biggest hack in the history of the press in our country” and it knows who to blame: Meta.

• Huh? Okay, first, the basics. 

The drama is about the wedding  of Tamara Falcó and Íñigo Onieva, who got hitched last weekend. But of course you know that because you’re on top of all the most important Spain news.

• Just kidding! For those who don’t spend hours reading celebrity mags, Tamara Falcó is the socialite daughter of Carlos Falcó, 12th Marquess of Castel-Moncayo, and Isabel Preysler, who is famous for having been in long relationships with both guapo singer Julio “To All The Girls I've Loved Before” Iglesias and Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa (Isabel’s interest in the arts is broad). 

• Onieva is a playboy/car designer/nightclub owner who is eight years younger than Falcó and in the past has been less than faithful to her, so everybody was super happy to watch the lovers finally settle down to have a celebrity wedding. But afterwards, someone got unhappy: the celeb mag ¡Hola!

Why? Well, ¡Hola! Bought the exclusive rights to the wedding photos in what’s been called “the most expensive exclusive in history” (we have our doubts, but anyway…). And it moved up the publication of the mag’s Falcó wedding issue from the usual publication date of Wednesday to Monday, and sold out so quickly it put into motion a second printing.

• But, but, but… As quickly as you can say, “Scan as PDF”, somebody or some people just did that, and PDFs of the wedding photo special began shooting around Spanish WhatsApp so fast that many of Spain’s mobile phone towers lit on fire (okay, we made that up, but, like, thousands of people got the PDF). 

Now the AMI (and ¡Hola!, natch) are absolutely livid that people would dare read the PDF on their phone instead of going to buy a copy of the magazine in one of Spain’s rapidly disappearing quioscos or read it in their hair salon. 

• Luckily for everyone, they have a solution: Meta should stop the PDFs from being shared. The AMI said in its statement on this horrible, terrible crime that it “requests that Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, behave responsibly in such a way that it immediately stops the illegitimate distribution of editorial content and puts in place the necessary means to prevent these behaviors from reproducing in the future.⁣”

• Errr, one problem. WhatsApp messages and attachments are end-to-end encrypted, which means that the only people who can see them are the sender and reader. Meta/WhatsApp claim that they can’t read your messages or hear your calls—and can’t even produce the content in response to government requests—so, unless they’re lying, AMI’s request is impossible to follow.

And on a final note—Onieva stood up to make a toast at the wedding dinner and ended up talking about his infidelity (and promising it wouldn’t happen again). Which is awkward.

2. 🗳️ Why everyone is talking about Txapote—and who he is

Two associations of ETA terrorism victims—Covite and the Fundación Fernando Buesa Blanco—along with the families of a score of victims called on Spain’s politicians (specifically, those from PP and Vox) to stop using the slogan “Que te vote Txapote” (“Let Txapote vote for you”). Specifically, they said, using the phrase "trivializes terrorism and terrorists" and "is very painful for some victims". So who is Txapote—and what does that phrase actually mean?

• Javier García Gaztelu, aka “Txapote”, was one of ETA’s bloodiest killers, most known as the terrorist who kidnapped and killed a PP town councilman in the Basque country named Miguel Ángel Blanco in 1997. 

• The kidnapping—and the kidnappers’ demand that Spain transfer all ETA prisoners to Basque country—galvanized people into demonstrations across Spain. But soon after the deadline passed without the transfers beginning, Txapote shot Blanco in the back of the head. He has been in prison for the crime since 2005.

• "Txapote is the murderer of dozens of people," the victims associations said. "That the families of his victims have to listen to his name insistently in a slogan that undermines what the murder of his relatives meant is unworthy and cruel."

• But not everyone agrees. Some 100 other relatives of ETA victims—including Blanco’s own sister Marimar, a PP politician—wrote a competing letter telling the groups to not try to speak for all victims and their families. "It is impossible to eradicate from the collective imagination an expression that was born of the people. We cannot and should not do it,” they wrote. “Furthermore, it is what hundreds of us feel.”

So, what the hell? El Confidencial traces the use of the slogan back to September 2022, when a Vox supporter held up a sign featuring it during a visit of Pedro Sánchez to Sevilla. That came soon after the Sánchez government announced it would transfer Txapote from a Madrid prison to one in Basque Country, to be closer to family and friends. 

• This transfer did not go down well with many people, especially on the right. The PP accused Sánchez of “handing over the dignity of the Spanish people” by moving Txapote in exchange for  the votes of EH Bildu on pieces of legislation Sánchez wanted to pass. Quick reminder: Bildu is a left-wing, Basque nationalist/separatist party that, in recent local elections, ran 44 convicted members and associates of the ETA terrorist group—including seven convicted for violent crimes. 

The phrase, then, basically means that Sánchez should be happy with the terrorist vote because he’s popular with them, and it started spreading earlier this year. An interviewee on RTVE said “Que te vote Txapote, Sánchez” in January;  Madrid regional president used the phrase in the regional parliament in February; and the PP’s youth wing in Rivas-Vaciamadrid made t-shirts with the slogan. And, as you can see in the video above, it was a big hit at the bullfight (very much not a hotspot for Sánchez voters) during San Fermín in Pamplona. 

• Sánchez tried to get Núñez Feijóo to come out against the phrase in their Monday debate, but the PP boss demurred. So it looks like it will be with us for a while. 

3.  🪧 Even more controversial banners!

Another week, another giant controversial banner for everyone in Madrid to see. Well, this time it’s actually three of them.

First, it was Greenpeace’s turn. Earlier this week, activists from the organization climbed the Puerta de Alcalá, in the upscale neighborhood of Salamanca, to cover it with a banner that featured the sweaty faces of the four leading prime minister candidates (Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz, Santiago Abascal and Núñez Feijóo) and demanded they commit to fighting climate change.

• “Does climate change not matter to you?” (well, more like, “Don’t give a crap about climate change?”) read the banner, while the four leaders look sweaty and sunburnt. On the right wing, Abascal and Feijóo smile, while the left-leaning Sánchez and Díaz wear a serious expression. All four appear topless and with disheveled hair.

• “People aspiring to govern must answer whether they intend to take action against climate change,” Greenpeace wrote on Twitter.

• Madrid mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida, from the PP, said hours later the city would take legal action against the environmental group. "We are taking legal action against those who use a World Heritage monument as a space for ideological performance. Zero tolerance for incivility. The banner has already been removed by the police," he tweeted on Tuesday morning.

But that was not all. The LGBT-friendly Chueca zone also saw an enormous banner spread out on Pedro Zerolo square. The civic group Avaaz unveiled a 400m2 sign on a building to denounce the "pacts of hate" between the PP and Vox, in reference to coalition governments joining the center-right and the far-right around Spain.