There is a question worth asking on a Sunday morning, before opening your phone and starting to consume the usual content. The question is simple: who benefits from your anger?
Not with the neighbour. Not with the boss. With the one across from you. With the one who votes differently. With the one who shares a different flag or an ideology that gets on your nerves. Who exactly benefits from that anger of yours? Spoiler: not you.
Seventy percent of Spaniards believe that the level of political tension is greater today than it was a year ago. Seventy percent. Seven out of ten people in this country wake up feeling that things are getting worse, that the other side is the enemy, that something fundamental is at stake and needs defending. Meanwhile, polarization is no longer primarily manifested as ideological disagreement, but as a permanent emotional climate of confrontation: politics is perceived as a constant conflict rather than a space for problem-solving.
There lies the key. Because the problem is not that there are differences of opinion. Differences of opinion are the health of a democracy. The problem is that someone has decided that these differences are not for debate, but to ignite. And they have succeeded wonderfully.
This week, the Government launched a system to measure hate on social media. The tool, called Hodio, will publish semi-annual rankings on the presence of hate speech and polarization on digital platforms. The opposition has responded by accusing the Government of wanting to monitor citizens. The Government has accused the opposition of protecting hate. Media outlets aligned with each side have covered their version. And the average citizen has consumed both narratives, chosen theirs, and gone to sleep a little more convinced that the other side is the worst thing that has happened to Spain since the Carthaginians.
The mechanism is perfect. And it’s not new. These things have been happening for a long time. The big difference is that today, a mobile phone within anyone's reach records everything, and the virality on social media greatly magnifies what previously went unnoticed. Previously, the councillor who threw coffee at the rival was a headline on page five. Today, it’s a video with two million views and three hundred thousand people divided into two trenches according to their political colour.
This is not about cheap equidistance or that "they're all the same" argument that serves to avoid thinking. There are real differences between parties, between programmes, between ways of understanding the country. It would be dishonest to deny it. But there is something that almost all share, regardless of colour: tension is useful to them. An enraged electorate mobilises. An angry citizen does not analyse, they vote with their gut. A debate turned into a trench war is not won with reasons, but with noise.
Data confirms that emotional polarization is not reduced by appealing to abstract consensuses. The main problem is not political disagreement, but its permanent translation into terms of threat and antagonism. When a significant portion of the citizenry experiences politics as a constant state of symbolic war, the problem is no longer who wins the elections, but what kind of democracy remains afterwards.
What kind of democracy remains. That is the real question.
Because in the end, while you and I argue on X about who is more to blame for the ruin of Spain, those who make decisions that affect your daily life continue to make them. Calmly. Without anyone bothering them too much. Busy as we are hating each other.
They win when you hate. Remember that the next time you go to hit "share".
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