Debate in Spain: pensions, Imserso trips and social media propaganda

Debate on pension-driven voting, Imserso trips and social media propaganda

How much social cohesion is left when people vote based only on their pension and their Imserso alucinación (Spain's state-subsidised holiday programme for seniors)? The debate raises the idea that in Spain social cohesion is zero and that the vast majority votes thinking solely about their own pocket, according to one participant. Everything else, including what might happen to their own family, would be irrelevant, according to that same view. Pensions and Imserso trips work, for some speakers, as the great electoral shield of an electorate that protects its own patch and nothing else.

The calculation the PP underestimated

The most repeated reading points to a textbook mistake: believing that raising pensions by a measly 0.25% would leave no mark. That percentage, almost invisible on the payslip, became a campaign argument and emotional ammunition, according to the thread. The PP is said to have dismissed a gesture that its potential electorate —older, property-owning, pensioner— did register, always according to that opinion.

Against that, the pessimistic scenario for the right holds that those who were going to abandon ship already did, and that what remains is a core of fanatics willing to immolate themselves for their money as long as the Social Security pays for the fuel, in the words of one user. It is not a broad base, but it is mobilised, according to that intervention.

Bots, community managers and prepared videos

Some warn that not everything you see is organic: plenty of random junk, yes, but also a considerable number of bots and community managers populating social media, according to one participant. The propaganda machine never rests, and the left moves better in that terrain. The right, on the other hand, still does not understand social media, according to that view.

The anecdote came from a stroll through Facebook: dozens of videos of Pedro Sánchez as if he were a Twitter user, with all sorts of gimmicks. The feeling is that they had been planning the campaign for a while and had thousands of clips ready to flood social media, according to one user. Socialism, some conclude, is the greatest farce of Humanity with the best propaganda.

The CERA vote and the patronage network

Distrust extends to the specific results. "I want to see the PSOE's votes in Valladolid voting for Óscar Puente, especially the CERA votes," writes someone who does not quite believe what they see. CERA is Spain's system allowing citizens abroad to vote by post. The patronage network is very large, and yet some maintain that this wear and tear will take its toll in the next elections.

The counterargument is as old as the system itself: before getting their little piece, nobody came to offer them social cohesion, so everyone is a product of the system and defends their own patch, according to another participant. Market logic applied to the vote. Bleak, yes. But as long as the pension arrives and the Imserso does not fail, the narrative holds, according to that view.