According to Gallardo Paúls and Enguix Oliver (2014: 97), “Spanish journalists, compared to their colleagues in northern and central Europe, have a tendency to maintain relations with parliamentary politicians that are more symbiotic than competitive, and... their attitude is generally more partisan and biased”. This can be seen in the headlines of the news articles that comprise our corpus, many of which have been written according to the linguistic-cognitive frameworks proposed by the political structures (Charaudeau, 2012) and the agendas set by the parties. Thus, as we have confirmed, the most recurrent news in Vox’s electoral coverage during the April 2019 elections were those that reported campaign issues related to the electoral events led by this party and its candidates, or to the polls about the intention to vote for this party. This coverage was significant, as in the short campaign period both Vox and its leader appeared in as many as 413 news headlines.

The quantitative study of the headlines related to Vox or its leader published in news genres in eight Spanish newspapers during the campaign has revealed how two digital media, OK Diario and El Español, offered the most extensive coverage of this party, mainly by the former, where the coverage reached more than 25% of the total (25.7%). The journalists at OK Diario used dialogue as a strategy of interactive framing to publish headlines of a declarative nature that gave visibility to the statements made by Santiago Abascal. Furthermore, El Español made use of a considerable amount of direct discourse (mentioned above), yet it was introduced by verba dicendi, which showed their critical position toward the spokespersons of a party that had “banned” them, according to the newspaper’s own information, thereby disallowing their presence at rallies and other campaign events. Even the selection of certain statements reproduced in direct style in which Vox candidates made use of the dysphemism might have been a framing strategy carried out by Pedro J. Ramírez’s newspaper as well as El Confidencial in order to discredit them. Similar to what Enguix Oliver and Gallardo Paúls (2020, in press) have pointed out regarding the 2018 Andalusian Regional elections, the majority of the coverage by the Spanish press during the 28 April 2019 campaign was in line with models 2 and 3 identified by Esser et al, or in other words, the coverage was basically critical of the campaign events organized by Vox and the statements of its representatives.

According to the results of our research, references to Vox were nonstop in the media with different political viewpoints, either left-wing or right-wing, mostly when reporting on issues related to the electoral campaign issues themselves. In other words, despite its low level of political representation at the time, it achieved considerable visibility in the newspapers throughout the period analysed.

Furthermore, we have noted that the newspapers under study framed their discourse on Vox by mainly reporting on issues related to the campaign, matters concerning the political strategy of the party with regard to the organisation of electoral events, the ceremonies in which they took part, or in which they were banned, or in other words, issues that are ultimately secondary and far removed from the debate on the political commitment itself, or policy issues). In fact, only two media, OK Diario and El Mundo, gave considerable coverage to issues related to their programme or their political position.

The dominant coverage of this issues related to the electoral campaign and, secondly, of political issues taking a back seat, or in other words, issues related to polls, citizen participation, electoral programmes, coalitions, internal party issues, etc., allows us to point out that there has been a mediatisation of politics in this case, as described by Mazzoleni and