From reds to Bukele fans: the political rift at the family table

The family left is splitting between the reds and Bukele-ism

Seven million voters willing to "sell the country for 50 euros more in pension". It is not an official poll, but the diagnosis doing the rounds at Spanish dinner tables when looking at a generation anchored in sentimental loyalty to the PSOE (Spain's main centre-left party). The paradox comes when, within the same family, the father is a "deep red" and the mother is calling for a Bukele for Spain.

A left that no longer recognises itself

The picture emerging from those after-dinner conversations is of a rift that runs not between left and right, but within the left itself. One spouse entrenched in eldiario.es and the defence of the official narrative; the other, self-declared non-right-wing, sighing for the president of El Salvador who jailed half the country. Neither sees themselves represented by the abbreviation of the party they voted for all their lives.

The phenomenon is not a minor one. Nayib Bukele works as a wildcard for the fed-up: the promise of order, police efficiency, contempt for political correctness. That this temptation should emerge in the family space of the classic PSOE voter says more about the crisis of representation than any opinion poll.

Are these atypical families or the vanguard of a silent realignment? The dinner table, as almost always, is ahead of the ballot box. For now, the only consensus is that Franco is not to blame: if he raised his head, not even he would understand how Bukele fits in at the reds' table.