Why Spanish politicians have been snogging in parliament

Never a dull day in politics - at least not in Spain, where two politicians engaged in a kiss that fired up an otherwise dull investiture debate.

Pablo Iglesias, leader of the left-wing populist party Podemos, embraced Xavier Doménech, a member of the Catalan social movement Procés Constituent, enthusiastically on the lips in the middle of the chamber earlier this week.

Spanish social media picked up on it immediately and ‘Beso Iglesias’ ("beso" meaning kiss) began trending on Twitter.

The BBC reports that the kiss seems to be a variation of the Socialist Fraternal Kiss, in which two comrades usually embrace and follow it up with two kisses on the cheeks.

Leonid Brezhnev, of the Russian Communist party popularised the kiss in 1979, when he kissed Erich Honecker, a member of the East German Socialist Unity Party.

An artistic rendition of the kiss still exists on the Berlin wall.

Reactions have been interesting...

One person compared it to another Soviet-era kiss between Gorbachev and Honecker in 1986:

Another kiss-cammed it:

While one user pointed out that this was not the first time Iglesias had accosted Doménech for a kiss...

And finally, a political kiss has been rendered in art once more...

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