The success of Santiago Abascal's visit to La Revuelta on TVE is that hours before the interview was broadcast, several newspapers were already doing a 'live' of the program as in the previous World Cup, a crowd at the Albéniz Theater in Madrid was waiting for the candidate from midday, endless rumors about changes in the show's audience a day before the recording occupied the debate and dozens of curious onlookers, fans and media waited for Abascal to leave in the middle of the afternoon looking for exceptional statements before the program broadcast. "It has been a very serious debate. It has not exactly been an interview. Maybe on another occasion I can come to a calmer debate. I expected something else."
In short, the expectation (and this Tuesday we will know the audience, which is promised to be historic) was so astonishing that, with it alone, the far-right leader already exhibited his power without saying a word. In addition, La Revuelta gave Abascal a tailored audience, like the shirts. Of course, it was of some use: Abascal was going to enter TVE with a chainsaw and flamethrower, and he did it while they were giving him the wave. Things from the dictatorship.
Broncano had two delicate options: follow the joking and joking tone of the program, its recipe for success, which ran the risk of ending with him and Abascal exchanging jokes and laughing at any savagery that went through a process of frivolization (this is very ultra humor: you get carried away and you don't know where you end up). Or do what Broncano tried: a serious and firm interview, perhaps encouraged by Almodóvar, which does not improve either, with a tone of sincere concern. Before me was a man whose greatest public concern is immigration. Abascal came to blame the barbaric invasions for the tension in the real estate market, “because these people need a roof, they are not going to live on the street.” The Vox candidate refers to the immigration of those who arrive in a miraculous boat, the immigration of the starving: this person is to blame for everything. He who arrives by private jet, buys six buildings in the center of Madrid and sets up Airbnb for 600 euros a night, the only thing that strains him is his pocket.
“Six million people have arrived in five years.” And how many have left, Santiago. “Spain is in danger: its democracy, its coexistence.” And he gave as an example the law on grandchildren, with how close it is to several neo-Nazis on the lists. "Indeed, children have died. In Israel and Palestine." “The climate has always changed over the centuries and throughout the entire history of the Earth,” so it is better to fold your arms and wait for the meteorite or the dinosaur, whichever arrives first, almost certainly the latter.
The interview began with Broncano asking about feminism and gender violence, and with Abascal reciting the booklet. They got tangled there for a moment and then Abascal told the presenter that, if he wanted to deconstruct himself, he should deconstruct himself.
Broncano made an effort to debate and counterargue without much success (where irony and sarcasm do the most damage), and every question he understood could bother the candidate, he zealously padded it out. There is a balance that the presenter manages like no one else and that consists of drawing water from the well without changing the tone, taking the interviewee to his pachacho microcosm. It didn't work with Sánchez because the president was the one who brought Broncano to the river of thanks. It didn't work with Abascal either because Broncano's tone, his way of expressing himself (the successful stuttering in humor, a very pronounced trademark, but confusing in the political debate) looks bad in the exchange of ideas or in tense questions. It even seems to get tangled. And in front of him there is a guy who utters phrases that many times not even he understands, let alone defends them with arguments in harmony with human rights, but they are simple and concise, ideal to be applauded or retweeted. Broncano sometimes did not even finish the sentences, leaving the idea in the atmosphere for Abascal to bring it down to earth. He went so far as to defend that Sánchez is not a dictator but he is already beginning to “dictate” and will be a dictator shortly, the alien within is coming out.
It was all, in general, an uncomfortable disaster to watch: a preview of the Christmas gatherings with a willing family member interrogating in a snack bar in front of an ultra who brought the lesson crushed and who was not even contrasted with good morning, who almost gave them in the midst of impunity.
The best moment, the most comical moment paradoxically, occurred when Broncano criticized (politely, going around several times) the hunt organized by Vox against him for his program on TVE, when Vox manipulated figures and even blamed cuts in public services on the program's budget. Broncano exposed himself there intimately, lowering his voice, hurt, while Abascal listened to him very seriously, sometimes shaking his head. Broncano referred to his case (“you took a photo of me in Congress”) to put others on the table, citizens affected by the ultra offensive in the institutions. “I'm going to agree with you,” Abascal said. “We committed an excess with you.” Broncano saw there a glimpse of deconstruction in Abascal, the ideological dismantling of Abascal in prime time, so he was encouraged to tell him that the “hunt for immigrants” was not very good either, to which the ultra leader responded that that was because of the context, the context of “invasion”; If there is something that History teaches, it is that there is context for everything.
Abascal said, in short, that he had no position on Franco's regime and that it was better not to get involved in those diffuse confusions. We are left wanting to know who seems more dictator to Abascal, Pedro Sánchez or Franco.
