We can then become aware of two fundamental facts: the association of the linguistic with the social and, furthermore, condescension as a hidden form of contempt and, therefore, of implicit hatred of Andalusian, in the low status to which it is normally associated and, consequently, to its way of speaking. However, these are not the only issues detected in the media’s discourse. Others are also discussed, such as the political instrumentalisation of variety and its choice as a vehicle for informal expression. The arsenal of data that serves to verify these facts can be extracted from a resource such as the Virtual Linguistic Archive of the “Lengua y Prensa” project, with numerous samples of the new aspect that this hate speech towards Andalusian is developing. Nevertheless, we prefer to opt not for quantity but for quality, in order to avoid saturation of the material supplied (vid. 2.1.). It is above all that of political instrumentalisation, as a weapon of confrontation, the new front that opens up around the hate speech towards Andalusian. Such instrumentalisation is enhanced by the association of the dialect and its speakers with a low socio-educational level.

2.3.2. Political instrumentalisation

We have already commented that we depart from the consideration that any discursive practice is a social practice with determined ideological purposes. In the matter we are dealing with, we have detected that there are numerous occasions in which discourses of devaluation of the way of speaking Spanish in Andalusia are used for political purposes. Thus, for example, in 2009, the Catalan deputy Montserrat Nebrera, from the PP (People’s Party), described the accent of the Minister of Public Works, Magdalena Álvarez, who is Andalusian and socialist, as a “joke”. She did that when she assessed the Minister’s management of the heavy snowfall that fell in Madrid in January that year, which collapsed the region. Furthermore, trying to justify her description, Nebrera added fuel to the fire, saying that the Andalusian accent is not understood (abc, 01.11.2009). For his part, in August 2011, Juan Soler, Deputy Spokesperson for the pp in the Madrid Assembly, wrote on his blog that the manner of speaking of Trinidad Jiménez, Minister of Health and Andalusian during the socialist government, “la hace más apta para Dos Hermanas [a Sevillian town] o Vélez-Málaga” and, therefore, is not qualified to lead the list of the psoe to the Presidency of the Community of Madrid (abc, 08.19.2011). In addition, the use of the language must be recorded to justify nationalist arguments of superiority. In the case we are dealing with, Artur Mas, former President of the Catalan government, went so far as to say in September 2011 that “en Sevilla, Málaga o La Coruña hablan el castellano, […] pero a veces no se les entiende. A veces no se les acaba de entender del todo” (El Mundo, 09.29.2011). In addition, Ramón Silva, socialist Councillor in the Madrid City Council and supporter of Pedro Sánchez, mocked the accent of his co-religionist Susana Díaz during the psoe primaries, in early March 2017, when he said that they wanted “un pzoe ganadó” (La Vanguardia, 03.05.2017). As a matter of fact, the accent of Susana Díaz was also mocked in an absurd transcription written on a Facebook post by the Spanish Consul in Washington, in August 2017, using the coincidence in the Andalusian President’s and the Queen of Spain’s dress colour as an excuse, when both met at an official act in the capital of the United States (El Español, 08.01.2017).6