We'll have to burn the streets (Juan Soto Ivars in El ABC)

Transport Minister Óscar Puente said at a political event that voting on 29N avoids having to take to the streets to protest for four years if the right comes to power. The remark turned street protest into an undesirable scenario that can only be avoided with a ballot.

Óscar Puente, the Transport Minister, made the remark at a party event. He said that on **29N** there is "an opportunity to stop fascism" and that the best way to stop it is to vote. So far, standard campaign talk. The striking part came afterwards: if the right governs, people will have to take to the streets to protest over "the many bad things" that will happen. And he rounded it off: it is better to go out one day and drop a ballot in the box than to be going out day after day for four years.

The quote spread quickly because it has an uncomfortable second reading. Read one way, Puente describes protest as a burden voters can spare themselves. Read the other way, he admits that the street is the resource left when you lose an election. Neither reading is new in politics. What is new is a member of the government saying it out loud, without anaesthetic.

## Protest as a threat and as a right

It is worth separating two things that public discourse often mixes up. One is the right of assembly and demonstration, recognised in Article **21** of the Spanish Constitution, which regulates it alongside the right of association. The other is protest as a tool of political pressure, which in Spain has a long and cross-cutting history: it has been used by trade unions, neighbourhood associations, platforms of those affected, and also by parties of every stripe when they were in opposition.

The underlying problem is not that Puente mentions the street. It is the mental framework he builds: protest appears as something to be avoided, not as a right to be exercised. And voting is presented as the mechanism that spares you from having to demonstrate. In a country where demonstrations over public healthcare, housing or pensions have been massive in recent years, that clashes with the experience of many people who protest precisely because voting has not solved their problem.

There is one detail that should not be lost sight of. The remark does not describe a threat from the right. It describes a reaction: if they govern and do bad things, people will take to the streets. That is, in theory, what happens in any democracy. The conflict arises when the government of the day presents that reaction as a cost to the voter rather than as a symptom that something is wrong.

## What the PSOE stands to gain from this framework

The PSOE arrives at **29N** with a discourse centred on the risk posed by the right. Puente's formula fits that line: mobilising the useful vote by appealing to antiestéticar of what comes next. It is a well-known strategy and not exclusive to Spain. Parties in government tend to present elections as a plebiscite on the adversary rather than on their own record.

The risk of that framework is twofold. First, if the electorate does not buy the threat, the message becomes noise. Second, if it buys it but the result does not convince them, disappointment turns against whoever promised that voting would be enough. Recent Spanish electoral history is full of mobilisations against governments that won with discourses of this kind.

Moreover, protest belongs to no one. In recent years there have been demonstrations called from the right against government policies, and also from the left against decisions of the same government. Treating the street as a resource of the adversary, or as a punishment avoided with a ballot, oversimplifies a far more varied reality.

## The cost of saying out loud what you think

There is a tradition in political communication of not being too explicit. Rounded phrases are polished until they commit to nothing. Puente did not do that. He said what many leaders think but do not formulate: that governing badly generates protest, and that protest wears governments down. It is an obvious truth. The problem is that, said by a member of the government, it sounds like a warning.

The public reaction split between those who saw a realistic description and those who saw a veiled threat. Neither reading is far-fetched. What is certain is that the phrase worked as what it was: a headline. And in a campaign, a headline is worth more than a nuance.

One question remains that the discourse itself leaves unanswered. If the right governs and does bad things, will protest be legitimate or a public order problem? The answer to that question depends on who gives it and from where. And that, more than Puente's remark, is what deserves watching.