The Doberman is no longer what it used to be

As a campaign highlight, the debate is analysed for what it offers, what it hides and what went on behind the scenes. I have seen them from the inside, and on television. Here and in other countries. Feijóo will mark a milestone. Never has there been so much talk about the opponent's word. Never has a candidate been so aggressive (Sánchez came out as the dreaded Doberman), and never have we seen moderators who did not moderate anything, nor did they contribute anything to the debate. Well, maybe they let them do it, and that was the fun of it. Alone, face to face, Sánchez and Feijóo gave a clear picture of how they are or how they act. An aggressive man on the left with few of the traits that usually dress up a president, and a challenger with a lot of experience who was never put on the spot.

It is said that the president has the best advisors, tried and tested in previous events, it is said that they even created the threat of the Doberman when Felipe was in trouble against Aznar. I lived that second debate backstage, witnessing the unleashed nerves of the still unpublished MAR (Miguel Ángel Rodríguez) as Felipe came from behind to win the first debate in which Aznar showed him to be vulnerable. We don't know so much about who prepared Feijóo, but he certainly reached the audience and developed a clearer strategy. That of asking whoever has the majority of votes to govern. And he placed a piece of paper on the table for Sánchez to sign an agreement (Hitchcock's MacGuffin) and Sánchez did not know how to get out of the trap other than by putting on a disqualifying face.

Sánchez was practically on the defensive for most of the debate. The punches of the pugilist Feijóo, with the economic numbers in hand, were the most accurate. Then came another round of Bildu, Morocco, the Falcon... the heavy backpack of the man who has already governed, which allows him to be attacked from so many sides. And the most incredible thing is that after five years in government, one could see a candidate Sánchez lacking in resources, improvising, shouting, baring his teeth (literally) as if he had not prepared for the debate. Or maybe his nerves betrayed him and he did not listen to his usual gurus. Or perhaps he thought that the defenestrated Redondo would have sharpened his gloves better... The question remains as to why this Sánchez was so different from the one who once knocked Rajoy out with accurate blows, the ones that led him to receive the adjective "dastardly" from his opponent.

Sánchez wanted to bring back the idea of the doberman now called VOX-Abascal, and he repeated those names over and over again, while Bildu, Independentistas, Eta, Violadores, "sí es sí..." were the marks left by the challenger's blows. And Sánchez, nervous, talked and talked, gesticulated and bared his teeth. He became an image of a barking Doberman, but not much of a biter.

In that debate on Telecinco, when MAR saw Aznar at a loss, he tried to get into the studio, whose doors were guarded by security guards. They had to take him down a peg or two and calm his nerves. The coach (as the former advisors are now called, the Dorado and Pérez Puig of that night on Telecinco, plus their secondary ones, now promoted to main advisors) saw his pupil fall in the second round. What will his trainers think of this Sánchez, the men who fed a Doberman that has now been portrayed in the furnished jaw of his pupil, who shows his teeth a lot, but hardly bites?  Times have changed, and those techniques repeated over and over again now seem obsolete. It is no longer the jaws of Francoism, nor those of fascism that are sold to us as scare or kill. This new supervening Doberman, transmuted into a shrieking president, is not what it used to be.