The poet's enigma with 900,000 followers

It has "a youthful and motivating tint, fresh and urban, with hundreds of thousands of followers."

This is how the Espasa label of the Planeta group communicated the decision to deliver the third edition of its EspasaEsPoesía award, endowed with 20,000 euros, to a "writer, computer engineer and publicist", who calls himself Rafael Cabaliere and who, indeed, has a legion of followers on social media.

Until the book,

,

appears

, the greatest quality that the winner is recognized is having built an exorbitant audience: close to 900,000 followers on Twitter and just over 700,000 on Instagram.

Ten days after the awarding of the award and after a major uproar over the quality of the writings presented by the winner on his social networks, Espasa asked Cabaliere today to record a video from Venezuela, the country where he supposedly resides, and in whose circles literary no one seems to know him, to prove his mere existence.

The intention was to settle the suspicion that it was a programmed machine to boycott the poetic prize, and that what was written was a mere algorithmic combination.

In the middle of the afternoon, the protagonist appeared: “Months before presenting myself I dreamed that I won it.

Dreams come true ”, he said in a video released by himself and Espasa.

Cabaliere has no known work, at least in Spain.

"In Venezuela, we don't know," they say from Espasa.

They also don't know if his name is a pseudonym.

The first time that his printed writings in the form of poems faced a jury, it was together with four other finalists, and before Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Ana Porto, Marwán, Alejandro Palomas and Ana Rosa Semprún, editor of the house.

The jury ruled by majority, not unanimity.

“It was by majority and there was discussion.

I can't say more.

The five finalists were weak ", recognizes De Cuenca, who points out that the award seeks above all" the profile on social networks. "

Marwán assures that he does not feel comfortable and stresses that he was not unanimous.

Alejandro Palomas, the same: "I don't want to comment on a non-unanimous verdict."

The option to declare the award void was not contemplated.

Marwán, a member of the jury, says he does not feel comfortable: "It was not unanimous"

Espasa promised this newspaper that he would put the winner on the phone this afternoon.

He then denied the interview, postponed until October 15, when the book was launched.

Semprún, general director of Espasa, also refused to answer EL PAÍS's questions about this case, which questions the credibility of the literary award.

“The new writers think that they will not be published because they have few followers on their social networks.

It has become an obsession of the novice.

This type of strategy shows that there are people with little literary talent, but a lot to do marketing of themselves ", says Luna Miguel, poet and editor of Caballo de Troya.

“Whether it exists or not, something unrelated to the content of the book has been awarded.

I can say it without having read it and after seeing other awards and other publications of the label ”, adds Miguel.

The Espasa publishing house confirms that the collection of poems will be similar to what it shows on its social networks, verses such as: “Because there are days when your best option is to go to sleep, when sleeping things don't weigh, don't hurt, don't tire”, can be read in one of the fragments uploaded to Instagram.

Cabaliere clarifies in this profile that his publications on social networks "are not poetry."

III Espasa Es Poesía Award.

pic.twitter.com/dGCfct8wT6

- Rafael Cabaliere (@RafaelCabaliere) September 14, 2020

The Twitter account that later became @rafaelcabaliere was created in February 2011. At that time, it tweeted as @elperrocriollo, according to Twitter, which allows you to trace the name changes of the same account with a simple search.

In September 2017, Cabaliere deleted the previous tweets and changed his strategy.

Due to the responses and mentions it received in previous years, the general content of the tweets was similar to the current one.

In your new life, consistency is essential.

His account tweets early in the morning, Venezuelan time, and he barely has more activity.

It takes just over 1,300 tweets in three years.

Cabaliere apparently knew what he wanted and what worked on that social network.

At first it linked an Instagram account, now inactive, or its messages deleted.

Today there is no reference in the @rafaelcabaliere account to “Venezuela” or “Maduro”.

It is not clear that in his previous time there was not.

“It reminds me of Manuel Bartual in his day: pure and hard viralization because they like the content and it expands.

What explanation does it have?

None.

Can it be replicated?

Difficult, I would like to know how people's heads work ”, says María Bretón, head of social media at the GroupM media agency.

The biggest rarity in these years is the difference between their tweets.

Some have only a few dozen retweets, and the next day others go viral with 2,000 or 3,000 retweets.

Experts see such uneven organic behavior as possible, and it is also difficult to demonstrate cheating in specific tweets.

The Cabaliere phenomenon is not very strange for specialists in

and social networks.

Consistency and virality can lead to hundreds of thousands of followers at a time.

On Instagram, his takeoff is even more spectacular: 27 screenshots with his verses have led him to more than 700,000 followers.

“The metrics don't seem extraordinary to me.

The correlation between comments and likes is a bit low but it is more or less within the order.

Perhaps it is followed by slightly older people who are less given to comment at the levels of the youngest on TikTok, ”says Jesús San Román, co-founder and CEO of Binfluencer.