Miguel Arias Cañete and Elena Valenciano shake hands (Getty)
On Thursday night, Spanish television broadcast the first and only live debate between Spain’s leading candidates for the European Parliament election. The debate itself provided few rhetorical fireworks and precious little insight, but the morning after was packed with zesty controversy.
Most commentators felt that Miguel Arias Cañete, who heads the list of Spain’s ruling Popular party, came off slightly worse in the head-to-head clash with Elena Valenciano, his Socialist opponent. Unusually for a TV debate between politicians, Mr Arias Cañete decided to read his entire opening and closing statements off a piece of paper. Shuffling his notes around for much of the night, he reverted back to pre-written text on several more occasions. It made for a slightly wooden, disjointed appearance that triggered a flood of mocking tweets and commentary.
Perhaps realising that his performance had made less of an impact than he would have hoped, Mr Arias Cañete gave a television interview on Friday morning that offered up a curious explanation for his lacklustre performance. The problem, apparently, was the fact that he was facing a woman.
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