A nervous and "posing" staging: what Sánchez's gestures reveal in his appearance after the scandal

Disappointed, dejected, haggard... The image that Pedro Sánchez showed this Thursday in Ferraz after the resignation of Santos Cerdán, who was his right-hand man for more than a decade following an exhaustive report by the UCO , hides in his gestures great anger, shame and even "a hint of guilt."

Head bowed, the Prime Minister faced his first press conference with questions in over a month yesterday, and he did so fraught with tension and a strong nervousness that was perceptible from the very beginning, according to nonverbal communication expert Vanessa Guerra. "At the beginning, he looks at the media, at the lectern, then back at the media, and there's a sway . He makes a slight click with his tongue and there's a microgesture, a wink when he addresses the press," she analyzes. At one point, he even takes a deep breath before speaking. "This happens when you have a hard time expressing yourself on something, because you're going to face a challenge."

In the four minutes of the statement before the media questions, the author of "The Body Language of Emotions" sees an evolution in the speech, which quickly turns to anger and tension. "When she begins to explain the reasons for the appearance, her lower lip presses down on her upper lip, which denotes embarrassment ." She looks back at the lectern, makes an inverted "U," and swallows at the end... "There's an expression of disappointment, which I don't know to what extent it's lingering because she holds it for a few seconds," she explains.

And these brief pauses, which barely last a few seconds, are repeated up to three times; "they are two or three moments of a certain pose," he says, framed within a "staging."

Although the PSOE leader apologized to socialist party members and affiliates on several occasions, the expert finds his apology a "confusing" gesture, as his words don't match his expression. "He has a furrowed expression, tension in his lips, but the corners of his mouth are stretched. While he apologizes, he shows tension and anger," she says.

In his opinion, all the disappointment the president insists on emphasizing about the trust placed in his right-hand man "cannot be seen as a mask of greater anger" and even what may be "a hint of guilt" as he unconsciously bites his lower lip.

The staging in which Guerra frames Sánchez's entire speech has other components that have not gone unnoticed, such as the makeup. While it is an essential part when there are cameras in front of him to avoid shine and imperfections, the very pronounced cheekbones displayed by the Prime Minister point to a technique expressly designed to complement the gaunt image.

"I don't know if they wanted to over-emphasize it as a symbol of defeat, and that does the opposite." The gestures of disappointment, Guerra says, which are present throughout the press conference, lose "naturalness and reality" in this way.