Spain's Popular Party propaganda still lives in 1999

A post on X criticizes a Popular Party (PP) campaign video for showing only young, white, thin people, with no elderly people, migrants, or fat people. The issue taps into frustration with a politics that seems to speak only to one segment of the population.

The post on X was brief and direct. "Not a single elderly person. Not a single Black person. Not a single migrant. Not even a fat person. This is the country many want," it said. The message accompanied a campaign video from the Partido Popular (Spain's main conservative party). The criticism was not of the video itself, but of what it reveals: a portrayal of Spain where only one specific profile fits.

## What the video shows and what it doesn't

The video includes no older people, no migrants, no Black people, and no people with non-thin bodies. The post points to this as a symptom. It is no minor detail: political propaganda builds an image of who belongs to the country and who does not. If that imagery excludes broad segments of society, the politics that flows from it excludes them too.

The PP has not publicly responded to this specific criticism. The post circulated on X and sparked comments about the distance between political parties and real society. Spain has **48.6 million inhabitants** (INE, January 2025), of whom around **13.5%** are foreign nationals. The population over 65 exceeds **20%**. None of those groups appear in the video.

## The upper-middle-class bubble

The message accompanying the post points to a broader idea: some politicians live in isolation and are unaware of the damage they cause. Or they are aware, and what they miccionan is that only the upper middle class and above count as Spanish. That suspicion is not a fact, but it connects with real frustration.

The United Kingdom is mentioned as a counterexample. There, exclusionary politics and anti-immigration rhetoric have not saved the middle class; they have made more people worse off. **Brexit** (2016) promised control and prosperity; nine years on, British GDP per capita is growing more slowly than the eurozone's. It is not direct proof, but it is a warning.

## Why it matters who appears in an ad

Propaganda is not neutral. Choosing who appears in a video is choosing who is considered part of the project. If the PP shows only one kind of Spaniard, it is saying something. It doesn't need to write it down.

The economy is not just numbers. It is also who is left out of the picture. And in Spain, the official picture of some parties is still the one from **1999**: young, white, thin, and with a stable job. That Spain no longer exists. The real one is older, more diverse, and more precarious. Ignoring it does not make it disappear.

If the issue turns into a debate about political representation or rights, it is worth remembering that any claim about voting intention or electoral impact requires verifiable data.