A picture. A vote. One hundred photos. Some elections. A well-known veteran journalist who followed Esperanza Aguirre for many years narrates a scene that perfectly sums up the Madrid politics that reigns right now in the main building of Puerta del Sol and in the Cibeles Palace: the two great bastions of the PP. The then regional president inaugurated in Spain the press calls in idyllic places for televisions and photographers from Monday to Sunday. She did not care what was advertised. Or what was offered. It didn’t matter which guests were. The important thing was a good background – goats, sanitary devices, trampolines, monuments – looking at the targets, smiling and holy Easter. Success came the next day. The image, drawn up hours before, was printed on the front pages of newsstands. Aguirre, this journalist now tells, grabbed her arm once during an act and told her: “Look, pretty, I don’t care if you tell me, but tell your photographer to take me out well.” Another day she blurted out: “Since I’m wearing flat shoes, I’m not talking today.” Welcome to the art of propaganda.
The communicative action of the environment of the president Isabel Díaz Ayuso has transmitted a very clear line during the pandemic: direct confrontation with the Government of Pedro Sánchez and sell at all costs that the Government of Madrid is very active. Without approving a single law or budget in two years, the plan was to implement a permanent government action. Make bread without flour. Do magic without official bulletins. Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the president’s chief of staff, is credited with a phrase that also sums up a way of doing politics: “You don’t have to buy from a media outlet, you just have to be their best customer.”
His team’s internal approach was very simple: no policies, photos; without laws, multitude of acts; no big events for him deadbolt of the pandemic, interviews left and right. The result: a success. The people associate that the machinery is in operation. On the other side, the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, opted at the beginning of his mandate for a different line of communication. The advisers asked him at that time to attract votes from the left and right. Distance yourself from Sol’s plan. Widen the vote to sweep in 2023. Ayuso’s early electoral victory suddenly changed his pace. The mayor is now experiencing his lowest period with changes in his team and trying to capture the same method as the president: great events, pompous announcements and interviews every two to three.
Ayuso and Almeida are two great students at the Aguirre school. The two worked for her at different stages of the match. The two move like a fish in water in media acts. The aguirrisismo and the advertising have fully returned to Madrid, if they ever left. Here are the latest examples:
The tributes to the victims of the coronavirus in Madrid have been one of the main claims for the capital’s media. Being the region of Spain with the most deaths from the pandemic―almost 17,000 victims―, reducing the impact of these data in the press has been possible for Ayuso and Almeida with powerful ads. “With these acts, not only photography is sought, but also iconography,” observes Antonio Gutiérrez-Rubí, a political scientist and advisor to dozens of candidates in Spain and Latin America. “In a society as fast-paced as today’s, this is very useful. The key is to look for images that last in the electorate because, in politics, the audiovisual world is unbeatable”. Forever there will be the photograph of the president dressed in black simulating a virgin in an interview with the newspaper The world in May 2020. Nobody remembers the answers, only the image, which generated tens of thousands of messages in WhatsApp groups and social networks.
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The first tribute to the victims of the pandemic was on May 14, 2020. The president received that day in the central courtyard of the Community building the sculptor Víctor Ochoa, who donated one of his works as a tribute to those who died of the virus. The two posed smiling for the cameras. The president also announced an international competition to build a tribute in Madrid dedicated to all the victims of the pandemic. A week later, the great work appeared wrapped in blankets, hidden behind a marble staircase a few meters from the site where it was inaugurated. It was learned that the sculpture was from 1995, that it had another meaning. Two years later, nothing is known about that international competition. The work, yes, is now exhibited at the Isabel Zendal hospital.
On October 18, 2020, the president placed a plaque with another tribute to the victims in Puerta del Sol itself. Despite being an institutional act, she did not notify any opposition party. She did invite Almeida, with whom she placed some bouquets of flowers under the plaque with the Spanish anthem in the background. The image was broadcast on all the national news programs that Sunday.
A year later, on May 15, 2021 – a day marked in red on the Madrid calendar for the patron saint Saint Isidro’s festivity – Almeida summoned the press to the surroundings of the Cibeles fountain for a great symbolic act. An iconic cauldron was inaugurated in an emblematic place. Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa also attended as an illustrious guest. “Today we light”, Almeida said then, “a flame that will never go out in Madrid or in the hearts of all Madrid residents”. The image opened newspapers and news. The next day the flame was out.
A report of The confidential counted months later that the City Council did not correctly calculate the consumption of propane, about four cylinders a day. The flame has not been relit since June 2021. Eight months with evident deterioration. Both the cauldron contract and its design were made through an emergency contract – the main tool that mayors have to speed up purchases in crisis situations, such as the pandemic – for 133,000 euros. “The link of this action with the purpose of dealing with the health situation is not appreciated,” warns a report from the Court of Auditors last November. This Tuesday a huge excavator was drilling around the cauldron. “The site next to the street is being adapted, as planned,” say sources from the City Hall works area.
The Madrid politician of the PP continually reinforces its messages with powerful images. “We are facing a political cycle where marketing runs the risk of emptying politics of content,” says Estefanía Molina, political scientist and author of The political tantrum (Destiny Editions). “It is very easy to sell stories of openings and holding events because what we don’t have is the ability to audit them afterwards. If they manage to publish these images, citizens continually believe that politicians are implementing many actions”. She herself remembers when Vox did not want to make any amendments to the 2021 National Budgets. “We are going to make videos on social networks,” said spokesman Iván Espinosa de Los Monteros. Being a trend on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp is already above parliamentary work.
We have inaugurated the Ciudad Universitaria park and ride, with more than 1,100 spaces.
To leave the car before entering Madrid and move around the city by public transport and other forms of mobility.
There will be 50,000 places throughout the Community. pic.twitter.com/ZmKtXxZ4bg
— Isabel Diaz Ayuso (@IdiazAyuso) January 31, 2022
More examples. Operation Chamartín has been inaugurated more than four times since Almeida and Ayuso have been in power. This great work of engineering, however, began to take shape more than 20 years ago. This same Monday the president went to inaugurate a car park in Ciudad Universitaria. Smiling, she announced to the media that this new car park had 1,100 spaces for the people of Madrid. telemadrid He said in your newsletter: “The parking policy is strengthened in Madrid to reduce traffic jams at peak hours”. The car park had been opened by Aguirre 13 years ago, as he recalled Cadena SER the same day.
The strategy is identical in the Town Hall. Last November, Almeida invested 100,000 euros in advertising in the media, including this newspaper, to boast that Madrid was the second most sustainable city in the world. The study came from a British phone comparator based on studies without any scientific rigor. The campaign, also visible in institutional accounts, coincided with the COP26 climate summit, in which the City Council hardly participated.
Right now the city is adorned with posters of Madrid World Capital of Sport 2022. Dozens of media, entities and children attended “the opening ceremony” called by Almeida at the Vallehermoso Stadium on Tuesday. “In this fight against the pandemic that we are embarking on,” he himself said before the cameras, “what better way to celebrate it than with this distinction. We have fought for it and for that we appreciate this distinction”. Madrid was the only candidate who had applied for this almost unknown recognition and which is delivered by an association based in Brussels called Aces Europe. The City Council had to pay a fee of 12,000 euros to qualify for the award. Madrid is the third city to hold this award after Guadalajara (Mexico) and Abu Dhabi. The images of the mayor with the banner of Madrid World Capital of Sport appeared the day after the ceremony in numerous newspapers and on television.
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