Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to cancel all official engagements in the coming days to consider his future came as a shock on Wednesday, a decision that comes in the wake of growing toxicity in the country’s politics. It became.
The Socialist Party leader is expected to announce on Monday whether he will continue to serve or resign. This was in response to what he described as a “harassment campaign” by right-wing and far-right groups after he and his wife, Begoña Gómez, became the subject of a judicial investigation into possible corruption. be.
Sanchez’s decision is entirely in character, given the near-nonstop drama of his six-year tenure.
Since introducing the country’s first successful no-confidence motion against his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy, Sanchez has had a habit of taking bold and often dangerous moves. These include approving pardons for nine imprisoned Catalan independence leaders and, more provocatively, proposing an amnesty law that would benefit hundreds of nationalists.
Holding a general election in July, the day after suffering a crushing defeat in last year’s local elections, was a similar gamble. Thanks to this, Mr. Sánchez’s Socialist Party performed well enough to form a new coalition government, despite coming in runner-up to the conservative People’s Party (PP).
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His survival instincts and parliamentary dependence on separatist parties in Catalonia and the Basque Country have infuriated the political right and made the 52-year-old a cartoonish object of hatred for many opponents.
That may explain why the tone of hostility has gone from merely intense to toxic. In 2022, some right-wing media outlets began circulating a fabricated theory that Gomez was transgender and had ties to drug trafficking. On New Year’s Eve last year, demonstrators hung up a statue of the prime minister in front of the Socialist Party’s headquarters and beat it with sticks.
When some media outlets began reporting allegations that Gomez used her position as the prime minister’s wife to secure the awarding of a coronavirus relief package to Air Europa, it sparked an anti-Sanchez frenzy. It looked like a continuation of. Although no hard evidence has yet emerged that she exerted such influence, the incident has been picked up by the PP and the far-right Vox and treated as fact.
The decision by a Madrid court to open a preliminary investigation into the case, following the filing of a complaint by Miguel Bernado, leader of the far-right group Clean Hands, appears to have been the final straw for Sanchez. Bernado’s claims are based entirely on news articles published by media outlets hostile to Sanchez, one of which mistakes Gomez for another person with the same name and has already been proven false.
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Barnard himself seems to acknowledge that the evidence he has presented may be flawed. “if [the articles] are not true and those who published them must accept responsibility for that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Madrid prosecutors requested that the case be dropped, saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
All of this, combined with Clean Hands’ long track record of unsuccessfully litigating politicians, suggests that the case will eventually be shelved. But the latest incident has dealt another blow to Spain’s judiciary, which has long lacked credibility in the eyes of Spaniards.
The use of the judiciary for political purposes, or “law,” is an accepted part of Spanish national life. This was a weapon used by officials of the former Rajoy government to smear Catalonia’s independence leaders. In 2022, Monica Ortola, the left-wing vice president of the Valencia region, was forced to resign after her judge accepted her far-right claims and named her a suspect in the cover-up of violence by her husband. . A girl who receives his guidance.
“This will go down in the annals of political, judicial and media infamy in this country,” Ortola said upon his resignation. Earlier this month, she appeared to be vindicated when she was cleared of wrongdoing, although her political career was nearly destroyed.
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PP leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo described Sanchez’s decision to put his future in doubt as a “teenage show” and part of a political strategy.
This could be another dramatic gamble by the Socialist Party with an eye on winning the election. But the constitution does not allow Mr. Sánchez to announce new elections for another month, so the obvious alternative is a vote of confidence in Congress, which Mr. Sánchez could win. Highly sexual.
But perhaps Sanchez really does intend to resign. By all accounts, the fact that even many of his closest allies did not expect him to take such drastic action as he did on Wednesday suggests that his feelings of discontent may be genuine. It suggests sex.
