Sánchez's Campaign Relies on Mail-in Ballots, Unions, and Far-Left Protests

Pedro Sánchez faces the election campaign relying on three strategies: mail-in votes, union strikes, and far-left mobilization. Columnist José Alejandro Vara argues the Prime Minister lacks a coherent narrative beyond warning about the far-right.

Columnist **José Alejandro Vara** publishes in **Vozpópuli**, dated **October 7, 2026**, an article titled «Nietos, perrofas y zampagambas» arguing that **Pedro Sánchez** launched his campaign without arguments other than these traps, with no narrative beyond the far-right warning. According to Vara, the Prime Minister cannot risk losing **La Moncloa** without resorting to these weak tactics: patches for the gullible, bombastic rhetoric, and tin-pot arguments.

## Mail-in votes and two million grandchildren

Vara describes the mobilization of grandchildren or great-grandchildren pending before the Supreme Court as the first trick. According to the columnist, **two million** are excluded from the census, but **400,000** are already approved and activated. Half of the constituencies risk at least one seat through mail-in voting, a detail that, in the writer's opinion, could decide the Government's tonalidad.

The text frames this operation in a context of wear and tear: eight years later, Sánchez has an empty bag, a terrifying balance sheet, popularity at rock bottom, and his personal horizon on the verge of prison. He did not want to, but he had to call the election. He spent the weekend reviewing his artillery and ordering his tools for combat. Vara summarizes it in one word: nothingness.

The columnist calls these resources crude, shabby, between angry and desperate, and attributes to them the stigma of the loser. The description of mail-in voting as a decisive tool is supported by the data that half of the constituencies risk at least one seat through this channel.

## Union strike against the opposition

The second trump card Vara attributes to the Prime Minister is the zampagambas: eight years of silence, not saying a word about permanent temporary workers, manipulation of unemployment figures, pitiful salaries, ruinous economic policy, and the anxious sweat of self-employed workers and unpaid jobs.

The columnist names **Sordo** and **Pepe** as the bosses of **CCOO** and **UGT**, and announces a general strike against the opposition. He calls it unprecedented, so ridiculous it borders on heresy, and predicts a resounding failure fueled only by the regime's loudspeakers. He quotes Sordo with that unpleasant cretin air announcing that tension must be created in the streets.

Vara describes the shame of robust unionism that is already dead and places this call as one of the three full-blown tricks to avoid disaster. The general strike against the opposition, according to the writer, is a crude resource that carries the stigma of the loser.

## Far-left and mobilized protesters

The third leg of the tripod is the protesters, the hippie pogre, the daddy's boys who one day camp in Puerta del Sol in Madrid and the next day set fire to Urquinaona Square in Barcelona. Vara speaks of much noise and fury, of the hordes that paralyzed the Tour, who tried to encircle Congress, who now assault events and squares with unusual insistence.

The columnist describes this exhausted far-left bunch as determined to scare the right, from which they come. Much Podemos, much opportunist verse, much ragged idler, and, above all, much free time and open-granted subsidy to make noise, cheer the fray, and feel like heroes for a day in a tune from **Silvio Rodríguez**.

Vara maintains that this tripod is scant and without guarantees, and that each day one step closer to hitting bottom, Sánchez has resorted to two trump cards he imagines invincible. The first is the appointment of **MJ Montero** as coordinator of his electoral campaign, a great success in the Andalusian elections, who almost ended up outside the regional parliament herself, a loser without palliatives, an antological disaster, the architect of the fiscal plunder of Spaniards, now rescued from the sinkhole because Sánchez no longer trusts either **Bolaños** or **Óscar López**.

## Zapatero and the return of Waterloo

The second trump card Vara attributes to Sánchez is the reappearance of **Rodríguez Zapatero**, king of jewelry, diamond smuggler, basin-bearer of the incivil regime of the Orinoco, and dynamic element in adverse electoral meetings. They attribute to him the surprise of 2023, when it was all PP, and the victory of the crooked sacristan **Illa**, who abandoned the pandemic in Madrid with **130,000 dead** behind him.

Vara maintains that Sánchez's race to re-election will be a rosary of traps, a collection of lies, a dense mirage of tricks. He started with a million-euro offer of free credits to the young who detest him. 'Son of fruit' has been the song of the summer, he writes. No one under thirty and two neurons in the cerebellum will hand over their vote.

The columnist closes with the return of the outlaw of Waterloo, who encourages the right's vote. He quotes Sánchez's proclamation in 2019: «I will bring him back to Spain to answer before Justice». And adds: perhaps the one who finally has to answer is he, like his brother and his vvife. The doubt of the dungeon, said miss Emily.