Political turmoil during recent months is being translated, as one would expect, into discourse, the inseparable companion of political action. In contemporary politicians’ discourse decisive battles within public life are being unleashed, which perhaps has always been and will remain so. Everyone aims for persuasion— if not seduction.

Social reality is enormously complex and difficult to understand for non-experts. But everyday people decide, with their vote or abstention, who legislates and governs. There is no resigning from being a citizen.

Good orators— a species in danger of extinction— ably use metaphors as a means to persuade. The mastery of metaphor was, for Aristotle, the mark of genius. "Geniuses" know how to exploit the full potential that talking about certain— usually abstract and complex— realities entails (politics, for example) in terms that are concrete and familiar to a non-expert. It is what we do when we use words like file, paper, portal, virus, upload and download, etc., to talk about the internet and its somewhat incomprehensible realities.

Some metaphors are so common that they have lost their initial impact: no one is surprised by phrases like “making cuts" or "belt-tightening" or "a party not making it in the polls” or that the population’s age is “sky rocketing.” Whoever created these metaphors or used them appropriately was able to express ideas in a lively, quick and effective fashion. We need sensory perception. If we compare the phrases "The government is using Social Security reserve funds" and "The government is sticking its hand into the pension piggy bank," we find that it is easier to understand, imagine and remember the latter one, which manages to forcefully materialize the abstract terms contained in the former. It is thus not at all surprising that politicians, in their persuasive strategies, make abundant use of metaphors and other rhetorical devices of similar effect.

It is worth noting the contrast between the metaphors, broadly speaking, with which different parties refer to the same event. Tweets from recent weeks are enough to illustrate this. For example, to designate PSOE’s abstention in Mariano Rajoy’s investiture (PP), Podemos said that the Socialists are "giving the government away to PP" or that Ciudadanos “are aiming at Rajoy.” PSOE, meanwhile, noted that Podemos takes the blame for Rajoy’s investiture, which "has burned all the bridges between the Spanish left and has opened the door to PP" and "has twice put everything on hold and blocked a progressive government," "has shattered the alternative of change,” and "flaunted" political postures. For socialist supporters of abstention— a taboo word these days— Pedro Sanchez and his supporters’ attitude (making an agreement with Podemos and separatists) was a "shortcut or trick" to oust PP from the government and amount to "dreams that will crash against [parliamentary] mathematics.”

For PP, abstention is a way to get out of "gridlock," "start again", "respect the polls," because, in addition, "just setting up the polls (for round three of elections) costs 130 million."

Disputes within Podemos, between Pablo Iglesias and Inigo Errejón, have leaked to the public, as we have all seen. For the political party itself, their disagreements were simply "strategic discussions:” “It is normal for a political force to have strategic discussions." For PSOE, however, they are a "structural debate on what the party wants to be when it grows up.”

An abundance of metaphors have also bloomed around PSOE’s deep internal crisis, which became public on October 1. The president of the party’s consulting firm, Javier Fernandez, released this double metaphor from the field of architecture: "PSOE’s political building is badly damaged, but its home is still standing." Other leaders used many literary images with terms like "sewing", "building bridges," "rebuilding" the party, "restructuring it," "to unite, not inflame," living "fraternity," channeling "debate," shuffling "positions,” etc. From outside of PSOE, one of the leaders of the PP said, with a clear exercise of intertextuality that would have escaped more mature members: "When a democratic party goes up in flames, a part of ourselves also burns" (Feijoo).

There are different ways of framing a particular fact that involves, as has been seen, various assessments and that aims toward different solutions to problems.

Like passive consumers of political speech, we should, from time to time, engage in a healthy reflexive exercise on what the protagonists of public affairs say and what they mean. That is, we should be careful with metaphors because they are the devil’s weapons.