EuropeAnalysis

Spain’s prime minister threatens to quit amid poisonous political climate

Pedro Sánchez’s decision on whether to resign awaited after ‘campaign of harassment’

Begoña Gómez and Pedro Sánchez: The Socialist leader will announce on Monday whether he will continue in office or resign. Ms Gómez is the subject of a judicial investigation into possible corruption. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP

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Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid
Thu Apr 25 2024 - 18:37

The decision by Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to cancel all official engagements for the next few days to consider his future came as a bombshell on Wednesday and it follows mounting toxicity in the country’s politics.

The Socialist leader plans to announce on Monday whether he will continue or resign. This is in response to what he has described as a “campaign of harassment” by the right and far right against him and his wife, Begoña Gómez, after she became the subject of a judicial investigation into possible corruption.

Sánchez’s decision is entirely in character given the almost non-stop drama of his six-year tenure.

Ever since presenting the country’s first-ever successful no-confidence motion against his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, Sánchez has had a habit of making bold and often risky moves. They have included approving pardons for nine jailed Catalan independence leaders and, more provocatively, presenting an amnesty law benefiting hundreds of nationalists.

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The calling of a July general election, the day after suffering major losses in last year’s local elections, was another such gamble. It paid off, with Sánchez’s Socialists performing well enough to be able to form a new coalition government, despite being runners-up to the conservative Popular Party (PP).

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That instinct for survival, along with his parliamentary reliance on Catalan and Basque separatist parties, has infuriated the political right and made the 52 year old an almost cartoon-like hate figure for his many opponents.

That may explain why the tone of enmity has gone from being merely fierce to poisonous. In 2022, some right-wing media started circulating a fabricated theory that Gómez was transgender with links to drug trafficking. Last New Year’s Eve, protesters outside the Socialist Party’s headquarters strung up an effigy of the prime minister which they beat with sticks.

When some media started publishing allegations that Gómez had used her position as wife of the prime minister to ensure the awarding of a Covid rescue package for Air Europa airline, it looked like a continuation of the anti-Sánchez frenzy. No hard evidence has yet emerged that she exerted any such influence, but the case was taken up by the PP and the far-right Vox, which has treated it as fact.

A Madrid court’s decision to open a preliminary investigation into the case, after the presentation of a lawsuit by Miguel Bernad, leader of far-right organisation Clean Hands, appears to have been the final straw for Sánchez. Bernad’s allegations are based entirely on news articles published by media hostile to Sánchez, one of which has already been proven to be false after it mistook Gómez for another individual with the same name.

[ Spain’s Pedro Sánchez loses amnesty vote after Catalan partners rebel ]

Bernad himself appeared to acknowledge that the evidence he has presented could be faulty. “If [the articles] are not true, those who published them must accept that responsibility,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Madrid prosecutor’s office has called on the lawsuit to be withdrawn, arguing there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

All of this, along with Clean Hands’ lengthy track record of presenting unsuccessful suits against politicians, suggests the case will eventually be shelved. However, Spain’s judiciary, which has long lacked credibility in the eyes of Spaniards, has suffered yet another blow with this episode.

The use of the judiciary for political ends – “lawfare” – has become an accepted element of Spanish public life. It was a weapon used by officials in the previous government of Rajoy to smear Catalan independence leaders. In 2022, the left-wing vice-president of the Valencia region, Mónica Oltra, was forced to step down after a judge accepted a claim made by the far right and named her as a suspect in the covering up of her husband’s abuse of a girl under his tutelage.

“This will go down in the history of political, judicial and media infamy of this country,” Oltra said as she resigned. She appeared to be right when, earlier this month, she was cleared of wrongdoing, her political career having been all but destroyed.

Partido Popular's leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo says Pedro Sánchez’s decision to cast doubt on his own future is 'a teenage spectacle'. Photograph: Oscar Del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has described Sánchez’s decision to cast doubt on his own future as “a teenage spectacle” and part of a political strategy.

It may turn out to be yet another dramatic gamble by the Socialist, with electoral gain in mind. However, the constitution does not allow Sánchez to announce the calling of a new election for another month, so an obvious alternative would be to call a vote of confidence in Congress, which he would be likely to win.

But it could be that Sánchez really does intend to resign. By all accounts even many of his closest allies were not expecting him to take the drastic course of action he did on Wednesday, suggesting his sense of grievance may be genuine.

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