Aragorn, son of Arathorn, pal of hobbits, scourge of orcs and wielder of a legendary sword, appears to have met his match in a tiny gay ghost.

A few hours after the polls opened in Spain’s general election last Sunday, the far-right Vox party attempted to recruit author JRR Tolkien’s fighter to its cause, tweeting an image of the character Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with the caption, “Let the battle begin!”

Having slapped the party’s logo on the warrior’s cloak, Vox lined Aragorn up against the jumbled ranks of its own many and varied enemies: communists; anarchists; Catalan pro-independence campaigners; the liberal media; women’s groups and, last but by no means least, a small, rainbow-hued ghost intended to represent LGBTQ people.

The bellicose tweet, topped off by an incorrect accent, soon did its job on social media, eliciting groans, mockery and the odd proprietary response.

As well as despairing of the party’s graphic design skills, Twitter users pointed out that Viggo Mortensen, who starred as Aragorn, is a member of the pro-independence Catalan group Òmnium Cultural, and that Gandalf was played by Sir Ian McKellen, one of the founding members of Stonewall, Britain’s biggest LGBT charity.

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. Photograph: Allstar/New Line Cinema

The entertainment behemoth behind the franchise also pitched in, tweeting back: “We know the Lord of the Rings has loads of fans, but Warner Bros hasn’t authorised the use of our intellectual property for any political campaign.”

The star of the tweet, however, was the cheeky ghost. The symbol, known as ‘Gaysper’ – a portmanteau of gay and Casper – has been enthusiastically adopted as an LGBT mascot and now boasts its own Twitter account and more than 5,000 followers.



“A star is born,” tweeted one admirer, while another superimposed Gaysper’s face on that of Lady Gaga in a poster for the film of the same name. Others were even moved to crochet their own Gayspers.

“Can someone make an animated film about this little, antifa LGBTI ghost please?” asked one Madrid councillor.

El País reported that the colourful ghost is thought to be the work of a female designer who goes by the name of Baiiley and who has been selling items featuring the design through the online marketplace Redbubble for the past couple of years.

Happily, Gaysper was not a solitary phantom for long: similar designs were soon branded Lesper, Bisper, Transper and Pansper.