Without Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, today’s political news would not have focused on the civil war that the PP is experiencing. Without him, it would also have been difficult Isabel Diaz Ayuso –who had lost the regional elections of 2019, but who would end up becoming president thanks to the votes of Ciudadanos– would have taken advantage of aa crisis like the pandemic to come out politically reinforced. And surely, without his decisive participation, Ayuso would not have swept the elections on May 4 last, orchestrated to liquidate Cs and consolidate his power and figure beyond Madrid.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, popularly known as MAR, is the architect that Ayuso has become the strongest icon of the current Spanish right. If Ayuso is alive (for the moment) in the fierce game he is waging against the almighty Genoa, and despite carrying a backpack loaded with the obvious questions that accompany the million-dollar mask contract, it is fundamentally because MAR is behind him.
The case of Miguel Ángel Rodríguez illustrates how strategy and communication are, in today’s politics, much more decisive than management capacity. The story prevails over the ideas, and words to deeds. Agility, quick reflexes and, above all, the ability to focus messages and the attention of public opinion They constitute the central axis of the political movement. It is the triumph of the ‘spin doctors’ to the detriment of serene and reflective politics.
What has happened this week in the PP crisis is a good example of the imposition of liquid politics. Given the evidence that Genoa was leaking the pump of the 1.5 million euro mask contract to the media, Ayuso goes on the attack with the complaint of the spies and even causes a first victim on the Casado side, with the resignation of Ángel Carromer, one of the people closest to the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Almeida, his rival. Whoever hits first, if he does it effectively, he starts winning the game. And MAR is an expert with a long and proven track record.
Long before launching Ayuso to stardom, MAR already turned out one of the key people in the career of José María Aznar to Moncloa. When in 1989, this journalist from Valladolid – who was only 25 years old at the time – landed in Madrid, as the right-hand man of the new general secretary of the PP and candidate for president of the Government, he designed a leader-building strategy that drank directly from North American politics. He managed to convert a gray character, unpleasant and without any attraction like Aznar into a credible alternative. He knew how to take advantage of the decline of the PSOE, creating phrases that surpassed the best slogan (“Váyase, Señor González & rdquor;) and transformed the image of a party with too much dandruff into a modern and attractive organization, capable of generating confidence and causing tension at the same time. It was his decision to place sympathizers behind the leader at rallies, hold press conferences almost daily, take the candidate out for walks – even if he was allergic to the street – and establish solid connections with television channels: Aznar entered Spanish homes daily to become one more, someone you can trust.
More than twenty years after leaving politics, MAR returned hand in hand with an unknown person like Isabel Díaz Ayuso -who in 2019 did not have any elements in her favor either- to turn her into a pop image. Based on opportunism, shocking slogans and skillful chess plays in post-pandemic management, Ayuso managed attract the trust of a broad layer of Madrid society that exceeds the strict sphere of influence of the PP. Only a magician who knows how to read the social pulse carefully and who has no complexes – or scruples – to go beyond politically correct norms is capable of obtaining the performance that he has achieved with Ayuso.
In times of liquid politics, many want to be MAR (or Iván Redondo), but most do not go beyond simple and sad applicants. One of the few legacies that the Catalonia of the ‘procés’ will have left is that of an army of so-called advisersfeeding daily on the bile generated by their respective political organizations, fundamentally focused on combating the adversary. First it was against the State and the other half of Catalans; now it’s between themin a depressing game in which the protagonists believe they live in the West Wing when they are really doing it in a schoolyard.
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The rows of ERC and Junts are full of figures of this type. Characters who have entered politics no professional background and who spend 40 years without having done anything else in life. They are, in theory, advisers, but they move from one department to another that they know nothing about when their parties exchange ministries or institutions. These days they watch the fight between Ayuso and the PP dreaming of the Catalan version and having the rival independence party as their adversary, but when they look up they come face to face with the sad reality that surrounds them: the Parliament, the Meridiana, the dream of the independence unit…