Following emphatic losses by the Spanish socialist party during the country’s municipal elections, which led PM Sanchez to call a snap election for July 23rd, Spain’s Council of Ministers has approved a massive €440 million spending package to purchase media space and airtime for governmental advertising campaigns.
It seems likely that the intention is to assign these funds to political allies. Indeed, the coming weeks before the general election represent a short window for the government to use mass media to derail the creation of municipal coalitions (between VOX and the centre-right PP, who in most cases have won enough votes to govern together), as well as to try to promote itself.
Kicking off the campaign, PM Sanchez has accused the PP of being too close to the “far right” VOX. The strategy seems to be one of obfuscating the latter’s defence of the country’s constitutional order, distracting from the many controversies in which the socialist party is now embroiled, including the fact that its ruling coalition includes parties comfortable with presenting (apparently unregenerate) ex-terrorists with blood crimes to their name in its electoral lists. It has also surfaced that socialist party candidates have been involved in a kidnapping plot, electoral fraud, and a South American criminal gang.
It remains to be seen whether the government’s use of public media, at the taxpayers’ expense, will make a difference to its anticipated defeat late this month.
