Spain's left-wing voters face growing calls for social shunning

Cutting off left-wing voters is already a political programme in Spain

From disagreement to dehumanisation

The proposal: stop talking to those who think differently, cut ties with family, treat your neighbour like a incivil. This is not an isolated outburst: it is a current that is voiced openly and has been quietly practised for years. Anyone who votes for left-wing parties, it is said, is complicit in what happens at the borders, in the country's decline, in everything seen as a threat. The practical conclusion: no contact, no conversation, no seat at the table.

To sustain this, a grim anthropology is built: the adversary is not mistaken, they are simply something else. Conspiracy theories are invoked, along with the idea that much of the population is incapable of analysis. When someone tries to talk, the circuit shorts out. Better to leave them with their beer and get on with your own life, they conclude.

Ceuta as a trigger and a divide dating back to 1975

The reference to Ceuta fuels the proposal: the events unfolding there turn voters for certain parties into directly complicit parties. The leap from criticism to vilification is immediate. But some point out that the moment never went away: the divide goes back a long way, and some place its origins in 1975, when those buried by the dictatorship resurfaced.

There is also a tactical nuance. Some admit their own side is a minority: they are too few. Against this, they invoke a qualitative superiority that needs no ballot box. The problem is that this confidence has not stopped the national conversation from becoming a minefield where your vote is grounds for social condemnation.

On these premises, reconciliation does not look like a near prospect. Perhaps the only hopeful sign is that the social majority does not share such radicalism; but those voicing it are convinced that this majority is precisely the problem. Until proven otherwise, the trench rules.