"Do not close, Perro Sánchez, you are the worst." A six-year-old boy who was skiing in Navacerrada uttered that phrase, with passionate diction, before a Telemadrid bus in March 2020, when the government began to close services due to the pandemic. It was something like the Ayusta reverse of the Valencian girl of "it's worse to die."
That day a nickname was born, Perro Sánchez, which later became perrosanxe and which comes to this 2023 campaign as a meme that circulates a lot, but almost always with a meaning contrary to the one it had when it was born.
After the boy from Navacerrada coined that "Sánchez dog", the late streamer Gabriel Chachi began to use that name, it was adopted in Forocoches and it was assumed by tweeters opposed to the government's action, in many cases apologists for Vox.
In an interview on June 26, journalist Aimar Bretos, host of Hora 25 on SER, asked Pedro Sánchez himself if it hurt him to be called "Perro Sánchez" and that the insults against him "had reached such a level of viscerality”. The President of the Government replied: "I can assure you that it is not pleasant." What Bretos did not take into account is that by then perrosanxe had already turned 180 degrees and had become an epithet used above all by related accounts, almost an avatar of the president, "a chaotic and successful and triumphant character who he adapts that idea of goblin mode, someone who, even if he doesn't do what he should, always ends up triumphing in chaos”, as defined by Álvaro Pajares, communication advisor on social networks, coordinator of the book Memeceno. The Internet meme era -where several authors analyze how these units of the viral explain and shape social debates- and co-founder of the meme account Policía del afecto (@afectoboys) together with Fran de la Huerta.
“Yes, there is an attempt to reappropriate perrosanxe, which perhaps is against and desperate, but it is not a bad thing that it is not built positively. The history of memes has shown us that some of the best memes have been used from irony. The key is to see how to unbalance the opponent and take the concept to a totally different point and many accounts are succeeding, "says Pajares.
This change occurred, above all, from the moment that Sánchez announced surprise elections on May 29, when the story of the reckless Sánchez who toured Spain in a Peugeot 407 circulated on the networks again.
The day after that call, which took all the media with a different step, Manuel Lardín Hoyos, a Translation and Interpreting student (recently graduated) who operates on Twitter under the name of EstegoManupk, posted his latest creation, a meme in which a dog is seen in a low-quality photo adjusting a tie with the text superimposed in green neon letters: “the dog knows more for a dog than for a dog”.
Aesthetically, Lardín says, he was inspired by a wolf meme template with superimposed text. His creation has been successful and has circulated in networks especially well after the appearance of Pedro Sánchez in El Hormiguero. “I'm not surprised that he pulled,” he says. "You always know when a meme is going to work." Lardín suspects that he uses it both for people who are simply amused by the montage, and for more politically involved users, who hope that the PSOE Sumar coalition will be reissued. "Left-wing people like me, who may be more or less unhappy with the PSOE but we also don't believe that Sánchez is the devil personified."
The researcher Mariluz Congosto, who quantifies tweets and hashtags to measure how opinion states are built in networks, prepared a graph for La Vanguardia on Thursday, June 29. According to his metric, the use of "perrosanxe" skyrocketed on the 28th (that is, one day after Sánchez's visit to El Hormiguero), it is used especially from Madrid and was written especially by tweeters who are located "to the left of the PSOE”, according to Congosto.
In those days, many original messages from the graphic humorist Juanita Banana (@alissonofabitch), the graphic humorist Mauro Entrialgo (@tyrexito) or Klkaustky, who defines himself as an "emergency account in the face of the imminent holocaust, received many retweets."
In a campaign, it is difficult to differentiate organic content, created spontaneously by users, from those initiatives commissioned by the parties themselves or their 'youth' from creators, supporters or advertising agencies.
The newly launched Tik Tok account under the name @perroxanche has almost 13,000 followers and seems to be aimed at a young audience. Post videos in which you can see, for example, "Perro" (who has already lost until the "sanxe") facing Pablo Motos and Jordi Évole to reach his final destination, Ana Rosa Quintana, on stages and with aesthetics of gamer culture .
One of the profiles that has joined the use of perrosanxe and has even tweeted about the resignification of the nickname is that of Mr.Handsome, a fan account that treats the prime minister as a pop star and makes an undisguised apology for the action of government. The person who maintains it, who remains anonymous, believes that the term was ambiguous (valid for detractors and defenders) since 2021, and now "part of the left has taken over it." In the account, he avoids going head-to-head with tweeters of other ideologies.
“Mr. Handsome is a little like Perro Sanxe to Pedro Sánchez, ”he says. "He has been criticized for being handsome and it was about turning it around and focusing on the positive." The author or author sees signs of a PSOE campaign that is pulling precisely from that more than enough profile of the president, which often reflects his account. "I think that Pedro has always carried a Mr. Handsome inside and now he is letting him see more."
When Pedro Sánchez does well, Mr. Handsome does well: last week some of his tweets exceeded a million views and one of them, with an inserted video of Sánchez's appearance on the Jordi Évole program talking about his insecurities during the pandemic reached 2.7 million views.
“Sánchez ran a risk, that because he was so handsome he would have more sex appeal than sex appeal”, points out the expert in political communication Toni Aira. Although he believes that the reappropriation of epithets such as the perrosanxe have been more spontaneous (due to the collective mind that governs the networks) than planned, Aira does believe that it fits with the strategy of the socialist campaign, which he compares to judo. “It is about taking advantage of the force of the attack to hit back, it is a fairly common tactic in political communication. It consists of victimizing oneself and insisting on the attacks received. It has recently been used by politicians like Ada Colau”. Aira compares the strategy with that of leaders such as Boris Johnson, who at times claimed and strengthened his image as a clown, the hyper-sober Gordon Brown, who campaigned with the slogan "Not Flash, just Gordon", or José Luis himself. Rodríguez Zapatero (now unsuspectedly reborn as a charismatic idol) who in his day made attempts to reappropriate what he called “Sosoman”.
“The excessive attack has ended up doing him a favor. He is not a particularly empathetic character. He is a very calculating person, which is why he has survived what he has survived, but this has humanized him, it has given him an opportunity to self-reference ”, concludes Aira
Enough to overcome some polls that continue to place him in the opposition? “Felipe González said that in 1996 he lacked a debate and a campaign. In Moncloa they have a feeling of comeback, but a few weeks may not be enough to fix the previous bunkering strategy that they followed with the President of the Government”.
