Dark marketing in advertising jargon is a trend that focuses on creating ultra-segmented audiences to which to send very specific messages. The objective is not to reach many but to those who are of interest to a brand. In the world of political science, it is translated as “black campaign” and the trait is added that it is used to knock down the adversary, circulating negative slogans in these groups who want to mobilize. Lowering the term to partisan contention leads to a “dirty war”. Six days before the elections and with all the polls against it, except for the CIS of Félix Tezanos, in Moncloa the theory has been imposed that the only possible way between now and 23-J to try to cut votes for Alberto Núñez Feijóo is cast doubt on his honor. “We are going to put him in a hive of bees”, warn socialist sources, who advance that Pedro Sánchez has an “atomic bomb” to knock out his rival and that he will foreseeably use it in the debate that will be held tomorrow on RTVE, taking advantage of the absence of the PP leader. The secrecy with which the preparation of the files for this meeting is carried out clashes with those images that the PSOE posted on social networks of Sánchez with his team working to face Feijóo in Atresmedia.

Although just a week ago, for Monclovite strategists a century has passed. Since the televised defeat, everything changed. If until then the chief of staff, Óscar López, had defended a positive campaign in which to sell the management and boost Sánchez's presidential profile, now he embraces the road map of those known as the Migueles, the journalist José Miguel Contreras and the former Secretary of State for Communication, Miguel Barroso, in the period of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Both, with great influence on the president since the departure of Iván Redondo, are experts in political strategy.

As El Confidencial has already published, the Migueles have been advising the use of the photograph of Feijóo on a yacht with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado as an “electoral weapon”.. Until yesterday, it had not been done. It was Vice President Teresa Ribera who opened the ban by asking the PP candidate why he did not attend the debate with four: “What does he have to hide? A drug trafficker on a yacht?”. It remains to be seen how Sánchez will pick up the ball and how far he will go to discredit the rival. The mission is to “condition the week” and take the initiative in the death throes of the campaign.

At the base of this approach is undermining the credibility of the PP candidate. From face to face, the socialists have focused on promoting Feijóo's image of a “liar”. The ministers have coined all kinds of expressions, such as “cascade of lies”, “lie like a scoundrel”, “lie cynically”, “smear with lies from minute one”. In parallel, this message has been replicated on social networks as a fundamental part of his “black campaign”. It was Zapatero who set the tone in the Al Rojo Vivo interview, by changing the prey to beating. He pointed out that the danger for Spain was not that Vox was part of a future government, but that the risk was that the PP governed.

The play is risky. In sectors of the party, there are many doubts and there is even open talk that it is a symptom of “desperation” that could end up generating a “boomerang effect” that translates into more votes for Feijóo. That the undecided opt for the popular one when perceiving the attack as “crude”, they insist from the baronies, where they consider that if they have an “atomic bomb” against the PP candidate, they should have used it before. In the territories, there is distrust and they declare themselves “expectant” to see if finally “there is something more” than the photograph of the yacht, which they consider “amortized”, since it was already used against Feijóo in the Galician elections and has added four majorities absolute, argue the same sources.

In private, even those close to Sánchez assume that it is “impossible” to win, but they cling to the fact that the PP “die of success” and does not achieve an absolute majority with Vox by a few seats: “If they remain at 173-175, it will be a pyrrhic victory”. In the analysis, it is that Santiago Abascal is not a “great speaker”, so the president will have “easy” to give him all the blows that Feijóo did not receive or will receive. The “involutionist” policies that they propose where they are in coalition with the PP, such as in the Valencian Community, will be ugly. Wearing down the extreme right not only harms Feijóo, for a hypothetical sum, but also helps Yolanda Díaz to position herself as the third force in her struggle with Vox. For the moment, those of Abascal have more options, if the published surveys are attended, to be on the podium. The Galician woman was precisely the first to rescue the image of Feijóo together with Marcial Dorado, as she did when she was in the opposition in the Galician Parliament.

In Genoa, they have been aware since Feijóo landed in Madrid that this moment was going to come. Sources from the national leadership assure that they will “ignore” this type of attack, which they attribute to the poor expectations of the PSOE, which forces it to display a photograph from 30 years ago.. They are not afraid that they could discover a Feijóo scandal, because “they have investigated him from above and below since he has been in politics”. They defend that he is a “clean politician”. In the party, there are more nerves, not because of distrust of the leader, but because “they are going to play very dirty” and remember that they already tried to sow doubts with the declaration of assets in the Senate. The countdown is going to be intense.