Ayuso, sauce and fruit: the noise drowning out politics

Ayuso, between sauce and fruit: when politics runs out of arguments

The headline promised a devastating blow against Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The content, however, amounts to innuendo and personal mockery. In the middle of the information age, the attack on the Madrid regional president dispenses with data, proposals and any analysis of her record. All that remains is the wisecrack, the sensual insinuation and the caricature. It is a symptom of how far the degradation of public discourse has gone.

The digital conversation about Ayuso has spiralled into a wave of personal attacks: her age, her looks, her ambition or her private life. She is compared to a plastic doll with little flags, her hunger for power is ridiculed and crude expressions are used. None of that answers the questions that should matter: what her government has done with the budgets, how it has managed healthcare, or what effects her tax policies have. Substance has vanished from the spotlight.

Worse still, some are taking advantage of the moment to slip in racist and xenophobic insults aimed at entire groups. That is not political criticism, it is plain hatred. And it should not be confused with the right to disagree, however harshly. Anyone who resorts to demeaning a group because of its origin or ethnicity leaves the terrain of legitimate disagreement and enters that of discrimination.

Meanwhile, citizens are still waiting for a debate worthy of the name. Time will tell whether Spanish politics manages to escape this loop of clichés and cheap shots. Or whether, sadly, sauce and fruit become the main course.