Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011, written on the night of Spain’s 22 May 2011 local and regional elections, one week into the 15-M street protests. Its reading of the results and the 5 million unemployed figure reflect that moment.
#Spanishrevolution started out as an “apolitical” message; #Nolesvotes (“don’t vote for them”) as a message to punish three specific political parties, the PP (the conservative People’s Party), the PSOE (the Socialist party then in government) and CiU (the Catalan nationalist coalition); and #Democraciarealya (“real democracy now”) as a protest against the corruption of the political system and of big corporations, above all the financial ones. The idea was good and the movement was excellent, but along the way more people joined, assemblies were formed, and those assemblies came up with a number of proposals. With some of those proposals, the initial message ended up being forgotten.
Victoria Bernal had already predicted what happened today, and as she puts it: “You don’t have to be a genius to know the PP is going to sweep the board after all this.” It’s a shame she doesn’t write a blog about economics, politics or mass social behaviour, because in the more than 15 years I’ve known her, she has always been spot on.
Consequences suffered by some and exploited by others
There have been many attempts to deny that #Spanishrevolution is a left-wing movement, and frankly it doesn’t matter. When people take to the streets, as a rule, those on the left tend to mobilise more easily, so if anyone gathered statistics (which isn’t necessary if we use common sense), those demonstrations would show a much higher percentage of former PSOE voters than PP voters.
That makes it an “apolitical” movement, but one made up of left-leaning people who are withholding their vote from the current left-wing government, which is what’s known as spitting into the wind.
The #Nolesvotes platform is supposedly apolitical, but from the outset it has been backed by supporters of Izquierda Unida (United Left). You don’t need statistics, just a quick look at a few retweets from people with that logo and a “no les votes” hashtag. Clearly, taking votes away from the big parties and giving them to a small one benefits the small one. Izquierda Unida had a great opportunity, and in fact its vote went up.
Now to the PP, which, it has to be said, has been the smartest of all. Right-leaning newspapers and right-wing TV channels were the most attentive in covering #Spanishrevolution, and many of them even mocked the protesters, the movement and every initiative they could.
They seized on the #nolesvotes message and twisted it until it looked like a protest against Zapatero’s current government, with comments like these:
- “No wonder young people are unhappy; it took them long enough, given the way things were being run”
- “Of course, they waited until there were 5 million unemployed”
These messages, which supposedly applaud the young people’s demonstrations and protests, carry a subliminal message that turns “neither PP nor PSOE” into “not PSOE”, and that’s exactly how it played out.
In fact, despite its landslide victory, the PP barely increased its vote, but the punishment of the PSOE was exemplary.
To top it all, it was Twitter users themselves who spread these messages online. Right-leaning newspapers had the most retweeted articles.
Action, reaction and consequence
Every action in life leads to a reaction that results in a specific consequence. In this case, the protesters’ action was to send out a message, at first against political corruption and then about other things… Society’s reaction was to twist that message, and the consequence was the ironic result: a “supposedly left-wing” movement became the right’s greatest ally in handing it a landslide victory.
As Victoria Bernal says: “You don’t need glasses to see it.”
A clear example of how left-wing and right-wing supporters behave can be seen in the corruption cases involving Camps (Valencia) and Chaves (Andalusia).
Andalusia, governed by the left for years, punished the PSOE, while in Valencia the case not only didn’t hurt the PP, the party came out stronger. They even gave Camps a few suits as a present for his victory and his honesty (an ironic nod to the case in which he was accused of accepting suits as gifts).
PS: The People’s Party thanks #spanishrevolution, #nolesvotes and #democraciarealya for their cooperation. Without you, this victory would not have been possible.
Featured image: NeilK, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
