In her review of the visit of several politicians to the Pradera de San Isidro in 2007, during the pre-campaign of regional and municipal elections in Madrid that would once again elevate the Madrid PP, the journalist Ruth Toledano (who two years later would become the first woman named chronicler of the Villa) analyzed the extension of the term “parpusa” to refer to the chulapa cap.
In his analysis, Toledano contrasts the habits and customs of the then mayor, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, with those of the former president of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre: “Gallardón, who is a first-class populist, stopped using parpusa. The great temporizer said that he doesn’t like to wear outfits that he doesn’t usually wear. And the fact is that he is right, because this looks like a circus. Esperanza appeared dressed in a chulapona costume that was only missing the scarf (or whatever that cloth on the head is called in Spanish).”
“What is traditional is not only what is folkloric. It is a way of being in the city, both for the people and the aristocracy, classist and at the same time popular,” explains sociologist and historian Emmanuel Rodríguez to differentiate the use of this identity by the popular sectors compared to that used by figures politicians like Aguirre. For Rodríguez, in conversation with Somos Madrid, “politics is a game of masks” in which Aguirre “knew how to play his role.”
A game that now “Ayuso imitates and incorporates.” According to the author of The middle class effect. Criticism and crisis of social peace (2022), the current president of the regional government takes from her predecessor elements such as “a traditional accent.” But no longer from the position of the elites who address the people, but from a discourse designed to appeal directly to the middle classes by assimilating with them.
“Ayuso is not Trumpism, but the evolution of a previous current, that of the neocons Madrid of Aguirre. It is the latest installment of the Madrid neoconservatives, the great laboratory of the PP of the nineties, and again the triumphant version of the PP, finished with watering down the embers of 15M and the memories of popular corruption,” Rodríguez wrote in an analysis of the Madrid neoconservatism.
The sociologist traces the main lines of this current: “They are characterized by their Atlanticist orientation, anti-communists, neoliberals in the economic sphere, conservatives in the political sphere, half-liberals, outright privatizers, but also statist in the protection of their social clientele: walking contradictions. and changing depending on who is speaking, depending on who they are addressing. There is an excess of ideology, of mobilization, of theatricalization, one excess after another excess. The most defining feature of the neocon It is his style: aggressive, solid, tough. Ayuso’s antics are less a provocation than an art: always being at the center of the media, at the center of conversations, on social networks and in cafes.”
The Madrid “processism”
Rodríguez explains the application of this same prefix neo- to the chulapism: “There is an anti-progressive component, of arrogance and moral sufficiency in the face of the supposed hypocrisy of a left that addresses the working class despite coming from the same middle classes as Ayuso.” He believes that the Madrid leader “has been able to play her role, take on the conflict and pretend to speak frankly.” A “kind of honesty, even if it is just as fake as the ways of other politicians, which also explains, for example, the success of the first Podemos.”
This “assuming the conflict” that the editor of Traficantes de Sueños also talks about is materialized through the exacerbation of Madrid’s identity, which functions as an “affirmation of local interests against what tends to be sold as a siege of Catalonia.” An identity that seeks to assimilate to the national identity, to the Spanish identity, and in contrast to Catalan nationalism. “Ayuso’s processism consists of confronting one fable with another fable: Catalan nationalism with Madrid pride, peripheral spite towards the capital’s residents with the apology of xuleria madrilenya, Hatred of Madrid clashes with the celebration of liberal Madrid. “Everything very emotional,” Rodríguez wrote.
There is an anti-progressive component, of arrogance and moral sufficiency in the face of the supposed hypocrisy of a left that addresses the working class despite coming from those same middle classes as Ayuso.
Emmanuel Rodriguez
— Sociologist, essayist and editor
A “Madrid-style” nationalism that tries to build an identity and then pass it off as the epitome of Spanishness. This is what Raquel Peláez, a journalist who recently published the book Blackie Books, maintains. I want and I can’t: a story of the posh people of Spain. “This Madrid nationalism works as a reaction to the existence of others that already existed. But it is crazy to give nationalist connotations to what is Madrid, which is not a historical nation,” he points out in statements to this newspaper.
“We see it in that semantic transformation of the Madrid use (or some Madrid sectors) of the word freedom. Freedom becomes shamelessly mixing public and private resources,” criticizes Peláez, in a phrase reminiscent of “statalists in the protection of their social clientele” that Emmanuel Rodríguez described. “That is, freedom becomes a kind of permission to do evil or contravene the rules. As if freedom were enjoying doing evil,” explains the journalist.
A “malism” (as this current is called in the new book by Mauro Entrialgo) whose forms go far beyond politics. An example is the commitment to businesses with a name and a sleazy aesthetic that proliferate in the capital, especially in traditional districts like Chamberí, exactly the same one where Isabel Díaz Ayuso is from and resides.
Raquel Peláez does distinguish these businesses that even boast of their posh origin from those traditional or popular ones: “The business names of traditional places usually highlight positive qualities (La Imperial, La Graciosa…). Now the new businesses a little more and they insult you to your face”: La Malcriada, La Chunga, Bellaco Mida… The establishments move along a similar line with tacky word games, such as the now defunct La Polla del Pollo in the Zurbano street.
The commercial names of traditional places usually highlight positive qualities (La Imperial, La Graciosa…). Now the new businesses a little more and they insult you to your face
Raquel Peláez
— Journalist and author of ‘I want and I can’t: a story of the posh people of Spain’
“In Spain there is a long tradition of posh scoundrels, and it still continues: the highest-ranking posh people, aristocrats for example, already have their destiny written. In a way, a plain person is luckier, because they have more freedom of choice, and many posh people rebel against that predetermination through canalismthe transgression,” Iñaki Domínguez stated in the same sense in an article in El País. A way of rebelling against nothing, of inventing oppression when nothing oppresses.
Left-wing ‘neochulapism’
Emmanuel Rodríguez placed “the hypocrisy of the left”, or at least the sensation that these formations can transmit, as one of the keys to the electoral success achieved by Ayuso’s “candor”, no matter how much it may be a designed and staged sincerity. In this sense, Raquel Peláez recalls the key role that Más Madrid gave and also gives to what is traditional, a “neochulapism with friendly folkloric use.” He mentions, as an example, the party’s typography inspired by the posters of old Madrid.
For Peláez, this strategy “has then been violated through a conscientious maneuver by the right to transform certain symbols into a reaction against other nationalisms.” He even suggests that “the regional costumes of the lagarterana or maragata are an invention to display an imaginary that did not exist.”
So, everything traditional is imposed? Raquel Peláez finds her refuge of sincere chulapismo in Bodegas Alfaro. This century-old tavern in Lavapiés, founded by the Alfaro family at the beginning of the 20th century and currently run by Ángel Rodríguez, is a Spanish tapas institution. A consideration achieved thanks to a menu that includes hits such as melva with peppers, sirloin in oil, smoked sardine, Iberian sausages, Manchego cheese, anchovies in vinegar, salmorejo, draft beer or vermouth. A place that maintains the aesthetics of its beginnings, although its current owners gave it a small facelift, expanding the space and revealing in some corners the stone on which it was built.
Peláez also claims La Pradera. An esplanade that every year is occupied by young people from the bottle, dozens of stalls of fairgrounds or humble families and a large proportion of migrant origin. “It is very difficult to turn La Pradera into the April Fair,” he says. Of course, Mario Vaquerizo could also be seen there this year, who performed with his band Nancys Rubias in exchange for 30,000 euros paid by the Madrid City Council. All this a year after starring in the most representative advertisement of the traditional Madrid of the elites. Ayuso awarded four contracts by hand for the Madrid promotion announcement, which cost 54,268 euros, of which Vaquerizo received 13,310 euros. He neochulpaism scoundrel is not only ideological, it is also paid.
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