Sol camp in Madrid: the left's coup narrative takes over

Sol: the housing camp and the coup narrative

A rally at Puerta del Sol in Madrid demanding affordable housing has turned, within hours, into the latest chapter of the 'coup d'état' narrative. Among tents and rent slogans, the conversation has drifted to other ground: who pays for it, who organizes it and who benefits. The housing protest is real. What has been grafted onto it is a theory that turns it into a backroom operation.

Who is funding the Sol camp?

The central accusation is that the PSOE (Spain's Socialist Party) funds the camp and that the tenants' union manages assets worth millions of euros coming from the State. As of this discussion there is no public documentation backing those figures, and that detail —the absence of paperwork— does not slow the hypothesis: if the protest grows, the argument goes, it is because someone is buying it.

Does the Government also pay its opponents?

The second leg of the narrative is more convoluted. The Government would be funding far-right groups to heat up the street and have a visible enemy; the right, it is claimed, would be peaceful and the tension in the square would trinc a script. From there it jumps to protest permits and the Government Delegation (the state representative in Madrid), accused without evidence. Spanish flags and some scuffles among attendees do the rest.

Who controls the dissidence being denounced?

For part of the conversation, neither the Government nor the opposition is in charge: the helm would be in the hands of foreign foundations and agencies, with specific names and international cooperation programs on the list. The conclusion drawn is that everything is controlled dissidence and that the real issue is not who mobilizes, but who pays. It is a suspicion built on distrust, not on an accounting trail.

Mobilize or let the protest wear itself out?

There is also a tactical fight. Some argue for doing nothing and letting the camp fall apart on its own —it is suggested that three days would be enough for internal differences to surface— while others warn that the left knows how to mobilize and that the PP (the main conservative party) could not withstand a pot-banging protest. Eyes are on the electoral calendar, with 2027 as the horizon.

Milei, Bukele and the minimum wage counterargument

Against all this, a model is held up: Milei's Argentina and Bukele's El Salvador. A term in government is called for that would bring the PP and VOX closer to those references, although it is admitted that this is difficult today. The reply comes with an uncomfortable figure: the Argentine minimum wage is around 219 dollars or euros a month. And the image of thousands of people queuing in Córdoba (Argentina) to get a job is used as a counterexample.

Beneath the narrative, the rest surfaces: the grandchildren citizenship law, the management of Ceuta and an affair called the 'tongo de Maricarmen' (Maricarmen's scam). One fact remains that unsettles everything. While it is debated whether the protest is spontaneous or bought, housing prices are not falling because of a slogan, and the model invoked as salvation pays 219 dollars a month.