Cloned accounts flood Spain's pre-election debate

The legion of cloned accounts seeking to decide your vote

Two months before an election, the Spanish digital ecosystem is preparing for a deployment of accounts that do not debate: they synchronize. A group of readers has begun cataloging profiles that, they argue, act as opinion leaders serving the official narrative, with the list already exceeding thirty names. The shared thesis is uncomfortable: we are not facing voters with differing opinions, but a machine simulating consensus.

The circulating diagnosis describes a recognizable pattern. Profiles with hidden history, almost exclusively political activity, appearing only in current affairs topics, and identical vocabulary taken from the latest communication manual. The most repeated term as an identity marker is «reaccionariopobre» (a derogatory label for poor conservatives), used as a disqualifying tag. The style, they say, is «passive-aggressive» and perfectly interchangeable between accounts.

The calendar dictates. The working hypothesis is that dormant accounts reactivate with each electoral event. There is talk of profiles that had been silent for months suddenly reappearing, and an army of new accounts that will dilute the few usual critics. The metaphor summarizing the atmosphere is a «zombie apocalypse» of coordinated messages.

Abstention, tactical voting, and other narrative traps

The most interesting part of the analysis is not the denunciation of fake accounts, but the map of messages attributed to them. According to this reading, there are three propaganda lines repeated with manual precision.

The first is abstention. It is argued that there are profiles dedicated not to praising the Government, but to sowing boredom and anger to push voters to stay home. The reasoning is simple: demobilization benefits those who already have a captive electorate. The second is tactical voting towards the Partido Popular (People's Party), arguing that real change requires concentrating the vote. The third is selective wear-and-tear: claiming that right-wing figures «have changed a lot» to dampen enthusiasm.

The temporal pattern is also described in detail: first, a leader is attacked from within, then presented as disappointing. The conclusion drawn is that the forum will be «a spectacle» during the next two months.

The counterargument: don't ignore, reply

Not everyone shares the blocking strategy. One school advocates the opposite: using these profiles as debate sparring partners. «I am not in favor of ignoring. You must always reply,» argues one of the most valued voices, proposing to train the art of argumentation in exchanges and then apply those skills in real life.

The advice has its competitive logic: whoever blocks loses the opportunity to refine their discourse and leaves the field open. The quote from The Godfather Part II reproduced —«keep your friends close but your enemies closer»— summarizes that philosophy.

Against it, the stance of massive blocking gains adherents through pure exhaustion. The underlying complaint is not ideological but hygienic: when the volume of coordinated messages exceeds a certain threshold, debate ceases to exist. And here appears the data that disorients both sides: the list of suspects includes profiles from all political signs, and some labeled as conservative turn out to be, according to trackers, the same person in different disguises.

What is at stake for the voter in this noise

Beyond digital detective work, the issue raises a serious question about the quality of public debate. If message volume does not reflect the number of people, informal opinion polls and discussion forums lose value as thermometers. The phenomenon is not new, but the proximity of an electoral event amplifies it.

The topics entering the conversation are the usual ones: housing, immigration at the Ceuta border, corruption, and the eight years of PP management cited as a balance sheet. The difference is that now every argument arrives wrapped in suspicion about whether the signer exists.

The cautious prediction: if the account deployment is as massive as antiestéticared, the effect will not be convincing anyone, but disabling the conversation. A forum full of noise does not persuade; it tires. And fatigue, in politics, has a clear recipient.