Just like US President Donald Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen, Spain’s far-right party Vox has made a point of dominating social media with its hardline rhetoric ahead of elections on Sunday.
Shunning traditional media, the newcomer party’s strategy is to target potential voters on social networks and generate as much of a buzz as possible, even if it’s bad.
And it’s working. Opinion polls predict that Vox will enter parliament for the first time in the parliamentary elections, in fifth place.
According to social media analysis group Social Elephants, Vox’s messages on Twitter and Facebook generated the most interactions — referring to messages that are liked, shared or commented on — out of the five main parties over the past month.
More specifically, a third of all the five’s interactions came from Vox.
Ultra-nationalist messages that also bash illegal immigration and abortion, videos showing leader Santiago Abascal riding a horse or standing under the rain in a picturesque part of Spain: the party provokes as much enthusiasm as rage.
“They’ve awakened the beast,” one admiring online user said this week, reacting to a video of Abascal predicting the end of the “liberal dictatorship” in Spain after the elections.
Spain was ruled by dictator Francisco Franco after its 1936-39 civil war until his death in 1975.
“They are so scary,” said another concerned user.