When you write in a newspaper, the people around you take it for granted that you have secret channels, extra info, that you're cool. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not. What you do have, for sure, is a stack of contacts on your cell phone who in turn have other contacts and claim to know things. On peak days, such as election days, impressions and pseudo-data bubble up through these B channels and serve to keep the politico-media sphere entertained until the real data arrives.
Those in the know had never had it as bad as the five eternal days of Pedro Sánchez's reflective break. In reality, and for once, no one knew anything. But it was necessary to fill the void with something and hence some threads on X, some comments on talk shows trying to imply that things were moving, that the president had one foot in Europe, that Zapatero was coming back. Before the appearance, when Sánchez continued to play equivocation with the visit to the Zarzuela that made it feared that he was leaving, the tension was already so unbearable that any hypothesis was valid and only the bravest opinionators continued to admit in public and privately that they had the same idea of what would happen as the friend from the village who had written him a WhatsApp asking: listen, the dog, what?
When the least outlandish thing finally happened, the one that would involve the least upheaval, no one said: "Well, I thought he was leaving". And the general feeling, even for those who felt relief, was one of dejection. No one likes to feel manipulated.
There was intrigue and gallantry in Sánchez's speech, which began with a shaky voice and ended a little firmer. He described himself as a victim, something innovative that will be studied in political communication, but he did not fraternize with other victims of lawfare and dirty war, or really with anyone beyond his party. There was also no concreteness, just a vague "we can do better". Once again, we had been fooled and, unheard of, the informed and the uninformed sailed together in the same undersea boat.
