Madrid (EFE).- The face-to-face electoral debates on television between candidates for La Moncloa return in the 23J campaign to confront the Prime Minister and PSOE Secretary General, Pedro Sánchez, and the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a format known to both, where the former feels comfortable and the latter has experience from his time at the helm of the Xunta de Galicia.
Eight years have had to pass before a face-to-face can be repeated in a general election in Spain. The last two-way debate was held on December 14, 2015 and faced the then Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, and Pedro Sánchez.
The debate on July 10 in Atresmedia between the current head of the Executive and Feijóo is therefore the return to a modality that did not materialize either in the election campaign of April 28, 2019 or in the previous ones of November of that same year.
The first face to face between González and Aznar
The first time that two candidates for Prime Minister faced each other in a televised debate occurred on the occasion of the 1993 elections, with Felipe González and José María Aznar as protagonists.
The first of the debates, lasting more than two hours, took place on May 24 at the Antena 3 studios and was moderated by Manuel Campo Vidal, while the second was on June 1, on Tele-5 and it was led by Luis Mariñas.
José María Aznar, who opened the debate, had prepared it conscientiously together with his team of political and image advisers. He was the winner according to most of the polls.
The following Monday, the two applicants met again. On this occasion, in a more tense and tense climate than the first, the socialist candidate took him “to the points”.
In these debates, even the smallest detail was previously agreed upon, from who arrived at the studios first, the temperature of 20 degrees to avoid sweating, the height of the chairs, the prohibition of short planes or profiles, the shape of the table in “U”, the absence of an audience or the presence of an adviser per candidate on the set with whom he could speak during the 5-minute intermission.
2008. Zapatero surpasses Rajoy
The two “face to face” debates between José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Mariano Rajoy for the 2008 general elections were the second opportunity that the main candidates for the presidency of the Government had to defend their programs on television.
These debates, held on Monday, February 25 and March 3, were organized by the Television Academy. In both, the polls carried out after the fact gave the Socialist candidate the winner, with more advantage in the second than in the first.
The duration of each debate was 90 minutes and without breaks; the first was rough and with an agreed and very corseted format, in which the monologues of both followed one another almost without interruption.
The point of greatest tension occurred in the final stretch when Rajoy accused Zapatero of having “assaulted” the victims of terrorism. The most remembered moment, without a doubt, when the then leader of the opposition resorted to the ‘storytelling’ technique to talk about what she was forever dubbed “Rajoy’s girl”.
The second debate had a similar tone to the first and was moderated by Olga Viza.
2011. The face to face Rajoy-Rubalcaba
For the general elections on November 20, 2011, the candidates of the two parties with the highest representation, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba and Mariano Rajoy, held a single “face to face” debate on November 7.
Presented by Campo Vidal and lasting two hours, the most watched minute was when Rubalcaba insisted on asking Rajoy what he would do with his unemployment insurance if he were elected president. In addition to unemployment, the economic crisis suffered by Spain was the other major issue.
According to different polls carried out for written media, Rajoy was the winner, although a short distance from the Socialist candidate.
2015. The harsh Rajoy-Sánchez debate
In the general elections of December 20, 2015, three debates called by the media were held, in some of which the representatives of the two new emerging formations participated for the first time: Ciudadanos and Podemos.
But the only one face to face was the one held on December 14, again with Campo Vidal as moderator, and with Rajoy and Sánchez on both sides of the table.
It was a heated debate with corruption as the main course and where mutual accusations of lying were exchanged. “The Prime Minister has to be a decent person and you are not”, this was Sánchez’s phrase that ended up driving Rajoy out of his mind. “This is as far as we have come,” said the popular leader at the time, who, in turn, branded his opponent as “mean, petty, miserable, and despicable.”