If Sánchez leaves these elections with the possibility of governing in a coalition, political, media, and judicial tensions will intensify, as, to put it in perspective, between 1993 and 1996. If, conversely, a coalition government between the PP and Vox is contemplated, along with the confusion that will arise in fitting these potential partners together, the tensions within the PSOE will rise in light of the possibility of lending some support to the PP to prevent it. Either way, these are the first elections held with generative AI broadly disseminated in Spain and worldwide, which will have an influence. How? By increasing the capacity to manipulate Huns and others (to borrow Unamuno’s expression), both Spaniards and foreigners.
“These are the first elections held with generative AI broadly disseminated in Spain and around the world”
Sunday, June 6, 1993. Aznar hoped to win elections that the Prime Minister Felipe González had called, essentially due to internal problems within the PSOE. Aznar won the first televised debate against a González who was not at his best, which paradoxically activated the vote of many who were going to abstain at the prospect of the right in power. And in the second debate he recovered. González and the PSOE won again, though this time without an absolute majority. He needed the Convergència i Unió of Jordi Pujol and the PNV to govern. From various corners, a campaign of harassment and undermining against González began. Otherwise, they must have thought, he would never lose. A campaign based on some facts that, otherwise, perhaps would not have come to light, such as aspects of the GALs and various corruption cases, the most notorious being that of Roldán, director of the Civil Guard, in addition to others affecting the governor of the Bank of Spain and some ministers. But when a part of the deep state revolts…
March 3, 1996. Felipe González had called elections after Pujol decided he would not support new general budgets. The Catalan nationalist right was key to the snap elections, as now. The president had tried to yield leadership to some of the brilliant politicians who accompanied him, convinced that the level of rejection he aroused advised him to withdraw. The favorite was Javier Solana, but he had “escaped” to the Secretary Generalship of NATO, a post to which a Spaniard could not renounce. And Helmut Kohl, then German chancellor, convinced González that a politician of stature should not retire, but should step forward after losing an election. Although the PSOE went out to win with that “Doberman campaign,” which partly worked, the PP was ahead in the initial projections, as in the count. Between 10:00 and 11:00 p.m., out of step with the count (slower than now), ODEC (Office of Studies and Control) simulations began predicting a PSOE victory, which caused concern in the Socialist electoral team and in the president himself, in case the scrutiny was questioned and the prospects opened up. The PP ended up winning, without an absolute majority. It would need the votes of Convergència i Unió. “Sweet defeat,” González called it. A warning that, when elections are lost, initial judgments can be wrong. It is hard for a party to digest a defeat and the consequences in the form of vacancies.
“When elections are lost, initial judgments can be wrong. It is hard for a party to digest a defeat and the consequences in the form of vacancies”
November 29, 2026. And what if “they win” Pedro Sánchez and the PSOE? By winning we mean, far from the two-party dynamic of the nineties, not just being the most-voted party, but being in a position to continue leading the government with a stable majority. Between 2023 and 2026 there has been a sustained campaign of harassment and undermining once again based on some facts (such as the Ábalos case) and others that are not, but whose center of gravity has been the amnesty law. If Sánchez “wins”, what will the deep state and also the epidermal (surface-level) actors do? It would be the political end of Feijóo. The recent statements by Aznar (who chose not to run for a third term in 2004) saying that “if the coalition government is repeated, the constitutional system ends,” and the talk of inciting a “constitutional rebellion,” are nonetheless unsettling. Some recent decisions—such as taking advantage of the shift in majority in the Permanent Deputation of the Congress—create concern among these sectors. Others fear the Supreme Court preventing a significant number of Spanish nationals from voting under the “grandchildren’s law,” many of whom were able to vote in 2023.
If the PP and Vox secure an absolute majority in the Congress (in the Senate, with the leftist unitarian candidacies, the PP could lose its absolute majority, with possible consequences for the election of the General Council of the Judiciary and the Constitutional Court, among other effects), it would signal the entry into government—since they would want it—of a far-right force. The rise of neoreactionaries is a broad trend, and not only in Europe. But Spain is no ordinary country; it endured the Franco dictatorship for nearly forty years. Therefore, the only way to avoid that would be to offer the PSOE’s parliamentary support to the PP to govern alone (a grand coalition still seems unlikely), in exchange for a series of reforms, including a new constitutional reform, which the PP in opposition will never achieve. It is a possibility that is moving in some PSOE circles, and it will be part of the tensions that open within the socialist camp if they lose. Although a defining factor for Sánchez remains that “no means yes” from opposing abstemious support in Rajoy’s investiture after the June 2016 elections, given all that happened subsequently in the PSOE.
An unwritten rule of our system is that presidents change every eight years, citizens grow weary, especially the youth. Felipe González, at fourteen, was an exception. Today the PSOE is blocked. Its internal mechanisms (congresses every four years, annual federal committees with no voting on management) are stalled, among other things due to the parallel legitimacy of primaries for its leader. The first thing that will be seen is the absolute hostility of the PSOE to the new government. Vox will make life difficult for the PP on several issues. In the pre-campaign they have stopped criticizing each other, a white-glove arrangement between them. The possible new government will need to clarify its objectives, for which it will have a couple of months, or it will find itself submerged in its own confusion. But make no mistake. Once they engage, it will be hard to stop them or to separate them.
The Spaniards are the first major elections of the AI era. A dozen months of developments around the world (Israel, the U.S. Congress) and in Europe (Spain, France, Italy and Poland among the “big ones,” in addition to Estonia, Finland, Greece, and Slovakia). The earlier elections and those of 2023 saw social networks, polarizing and manipulative, play a significant role, but not AI, and the combination is dangerous. In 2023, ChatGPT and other generative AIs already existed, but their diffusion was limited. In 2026, their diffusion has reached 45.1% of people aged 15 to 64 in Spain, the sixth-highest globally, according to the Microsoft AI Diffusion Report published in September. All sides are using them. And the citizens?
“The 2023 elections were ones in which social networks, polarizing and manipulative, played an important role, but not AI, and the combination is dangerous”
In 1993-96, the media were harnessed, with a handful of newspapers setting the agenda that fed radio talk shows and television news. Now there is a swarm of aggressive media that live off aggression. Information has become a jungle, and there AI has a role to play. The Habermasian space for dialogue and critique has become an atomized space of insults. Compared with earlier times—Brexit or Trump’s first victory in 2016—AI increases the capacity for manipulation, rhetoric, and imagery, especially when a portion of voters decides their mind in the final days of the campaign. Social networks already did this, and AI makes it easier for extremists to rise. If you ask these AIs how to vote, they tend to avoid answering. But they tend to favor certain viewpoints over others, not forgetting the new possibilities they offer for foreign interference. Perhaps not by coincidence, given who controls these new large companies, central to today’s world.
We shall see. Too many disturbing elements, when today, despite the majority of polls, many questions remain open. Nothing is decided. Will the AIs decide?
