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Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gives a statement to annonunce he will stay on as Prime Minister after weighing his exit from the Spanish government, at Moncloa palace in Madrid, Spain April 29, 2024.
Spain’s prime minister isn’t going anywhere
After nearly a week of uncertainty, Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, announced he would remain the country’s leader. Last Wednesday, he threatened to leave the position because of what he termed a “harassment and bullying operation” being waged against him and his wife by political and media enemies.
The move came hours after a Madrid court opened an investigation into his wife, Begoña Gómez, for influence peddling and corruption. The trial was brought by Manos Limpias, a self-styled trade union with far-right links, who accused Gómez of using her influence to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course she runs. Madrid's public prosecutor asked Thursday that the case against her be closed.
Sánchez’s threat to resign spurred demonstrations around Spain over the weekend calling for him to stay put. More than 10,000 people gathered in front of the Socialist Party’s headquarters in Madrid in a show of support.
Sánchez attributed his decision to stay to this weekend’s mobilizations, and he has called for Spaniards to rise above “the global reactionary movement that wants to impose its retrograde agenda through defamation and falsehoods.”
FILE PHOTO: Spain's Socialist leader and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, accompanied by his wife Begona Gomez, applauds as he addresses supporters during the general election, in Madrid, Spain, July 23, 2023.
Spain’s Sanchez surprises with a siesta
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez posted a letter on social media Wednesday announcing he would suspend all his public duties and take a few days to consider resigning. Earlier in the day, a judge opened an investigation into his wife, Begoña Gómez, over corruption surrounding government tenders and subsidies. The court did not give specific details of its allegations.
In his letter, Sánchez accuses “ultraconservative” interests of pursuing a cynical smear campaign against his wife because Spanish voters rejected them at the ballot box last year. Gómez holds no official position and is not a politician, and Sánchez firmly denied there was any case for the court.
Nonetheless, he wrote that his love for her made him question whether it was all worth it. “I sincerely don’t know,” he wrote. “This attack is unprecedented, so serious and so vulgar that I must stop and reflect with my wife.”
Subordinate ministers and political allies are publicly backing Sánchez’s decision, but maybe not purely out of solidarity. The PM is a notorious risk-taker who managed to hold on to power against the odds last year by calling a snap election and then cobbling together a minority coalition. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a crucial regional election on May 12 in wealthy, often separatist-leaning Catalonia.
A bit of sympathy for the PM’s wife certainly can’t hurt, can it?
Sánchez said he will announce his decision by Monday, April 29.
Spain's newly re-appointed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is congratulated by People's Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, at the Spanish parliament in Madrid, Spain, November 16, 2023.
Spain’s controversial new government
After weeks of bare-knuckle bargaining, Pedro Sánchez, leader of Spain’s Socialist Party, has secured a four-seat majority in the country’s 350-seat Parliament to win a second term as prime minister. The process has been exceptionally ugly.
Four months ago, the conservative Popular Party finished with the most votes in multiparty elections, but its leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, failed to find the coalition partners he needed to form a majority government. Sánchez has now succeeded where Feijóo failed by forming an alliance with Catalan nationalist parties conditioned on legislation offering amnesty to hundreds of Catalan separatists who tried and failed in 2017 to lead a process of secession from Spain. This is a choice Sánchez once pledged he would not make.
Sánchez says the amnesty can help heal old wounds. His critics charge that he has committed treason in order to win enough seats to keep his job. The country has been rocked by (sometimes violent) protests in recent weeks. The demonstrations may continue as the amnesty law moves forward.
Spain's PM and PSOE party leader Pedro Sánchez delivers a speech on the day of the general election in Madrid.
Who will govern Spain?
Two months ago, when Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez responded to a crushing regional election defeat by calling a snap national election, we gave him slim odds of keeping his job. But we did point out that Sánchez had the survival skills of a political cockroach.
His gamble paid off.
On Sunday night, Sánchez did it again: When the right seemed on the cusp of returning to power after five years, the ruling left-wing PSOE party outperformed its best expectations by improving its 2019 result and coming in a close second to the right-wing People's Party. Meanwhile, the far-right Vox Party lost 19 seats, and the conservative bloc fell just short of the outright majority most polls had predicted.
But the PSOE — along with the Sumar (Add) coalition of far-left forces — also didn’t win enough seats to repeat the so-called "Frankenstein" left-wing coalition government backed by some Catalan and Basque pro-independence parties that the PP and Vox had vowed to replace.
So, what happens next? Good question.
For the PM to get the votes he needs to stay in power, he'd have to negotiate with Junts (Together), a hardcore Catalan secessionist party that will demand an independence referendum in exchange. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo could also try to win support from the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which has backed them in the past but would require Vox be out of the government. Don’t count on either happening.
If the hung parliament fails to deliver a government two months after the first vote, Spaniards will have to do it all over again — for the third time since 2015.Vox leader Santiago Abascal speaks to the crowd with Spain's national flag in the background at a campaign stop in Barcelona.
Ahead of the Spanish election, the political pendulum is swinging right
More than three years ago, Spain ushered in its first coalition government since democracy was restored in the late 1970s. But that experiment — a minority government led by the left-wing PSOE Party with the far-left Podemos Party as a junior partner, backed by nationalist and separatist forces — might soon give way to another coalition that'll swing the country sharply to the right.
On Sunday, Europe's fourth largest economy holds a snap parliamentary election abruptly called by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez just hours after the PSOE got trounced in a regional vote in mid-May. And, unless the polls are completely off, he’ll be ousted from office by the combined forces of the right-wing People's Party and the far-right Vox.
You might think that after Italy, Finland, and Sweden, Spain is only the latest European country where the extreme right is on the rise, and that it probably also has to do with immigration. You’d be wrong — and not because Vox is fond of migrants.
Spain's lurch to the right is actually driven by uniquely Spanish culture wars over what conservatives refer to as "gender ideology" and Spanish nationalism (a catchall term for fierce opposition to the Catalan and Basque independence movements).
First, the PP and Vox have called out the left-wing government for going too far on gender equality. Two poignant scandals were the botched drafting of the controversial "Only yes means yes" sexual consent law — which resulted in more than 1,000 convicted sex offenders getting their sentences reduced — and passing a law that allows anyone over 16 to change sex without parental consent.
Second, the conservative opposition has blasted Sánchez for pardoning the Catalan politicians who attempted to secede in 2017, and for watering down the crime of secession. He also stoked Spanish nationalist flames by cutting deals with Bildu, a far-left party which still considers Basque terrorism a legitimate "armed struggle.”
That was the price the PM had to pay for pro-independence parties voting sí to his budget. And it’ll likely cost him dearly at the ballot box.
If, as expected, the PP and Vox together win a majority of seats in parliament, their leaders will be strange bedfellows in a coalition government. In contrast to the gender-fluid and easily offended perroflautas (which loosely translates as "hippies") of Podemos, Vox leader Santiago Abascal styles himself as the classic macho ibérico: a tough-talking alpha male who loves bullfighting and hunting as much as he hates COVID vaccines and city bike lanes.
Yet Abascal is also the polar opposite of his likely future partner, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a bookish former tax inspector whose calm demeanor seems out of the place in the maelstrom of Spanish political fights. Indeed, the two are so different that Sánchez failed to convincingly merge them into a single political bogeyman during his only campaign debate with Feijóo.
One thing that Feijóo and Abascal can agree now on is that, together, they can beat Sánchez. They can figure out how to govern later.
Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez addresses the media after casting his vote in the municipal and regional elections in Madrid.
After opposition sweeps local polls, Spain gets early national election
On Monday, Spain's PM Pedro Sánchez responded to the ruling left-wing PSOE party's losses in local/regional elections by calling an early national vote for July 23.
We predicted a big loss for the PSOE, but not this bloodbath. The right-wing People's Party clinched outright majorities in Madrid and flipped control of PSOE stronghold regions and big cities — although the PP will need support from the far-right Vox Party. Thanks to the collapse of the centrist Citizens Party, the PP surged by nine percentage points in the popular vote.
Calling a snap election is a surprise move and a gamble for Sánchez. For one thing, waiting six months until December was probably not enough time to turn around the bad result. For another, the PM might be trying to scare far-left voters into backing the PSOE as their best hope to stop the Vox bogeyman.
It's the PP's election to lose. But never rule out Sánchez, who has the survival skills of a political cockroach, an incumbent’s bag of tricks, and a tolerance for risk unmatched in recent Spanish political history.
Spain's opposition People's Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo listens to PM Pedro Sanchez speak during a session at the Senate in Madrid.
Spain votes local but thinks national
On Sunday, municipalities and regions accounting for about half of Spain’s population will hold elections that will reverberate on the national stage.
That’s because the votes are seen as a dry run for this December’s general election. Nationwide polls currently show the ruling left-wing PSOE lagging behind the conservative People’s Party. And since neither is expected to win outright, the support of smaller parties will be essential to form a government. The PSOE will look to progressive and separatist forces, while the PP will rely on support from the far-right Vox Party.
With the economy in the doldrums and the general election on his mind, PM Pedro Sánchez is already campaigning hard ahead of Sunday’s vote. He’s been doling out populist favorites, such as 2-euro movie tickets for seniors, normally seen only before national contests. Meanwhile, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijoó has been warning voters that Sánchez is not only killing the economy but that he’s also willing to cut deals with just about anyone to stay in power — including a far-left Basque secessionist party whose candidates convicted former terrorists.
Although this is not a national election, what everyone will be keeping an eye on is the overall vote count. If the conservative bloc gets a wide margin, it’ll give the Spanish right a lot of initial momentum ahead of the general election in December.
People wave separatist Catalan flags and placards during a demonstration following the imprisonment of Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart in Barcelona, Spain.
Why is Spain pardoning Catalan leaders jailed for sedition?
On Tuesday, Spain's leftwing coalition government will pardon nine Catalan politicians jailed over their failed attempt to secede from the rest of the country less than four years ago. It's a huge gamble for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who's fighting for his political survival against a majority of popular opinion, an opposition on the rise, the courts, and even part of the Catalan independence movement.
What's all the fuss about? The politicians were sentenced in December 2019 to lengthy prison terms for first organizing in October 2017 a referendum on independence, illegal under the Spanish constitution, and later unilaterally declaring independence. The national government responded to Catalonia's short-lived independence bid, which triggered Spain's most serious political crisis in decades, by (briefly) suspending the region's autonomy and arresting many of the separatist leaders.
Catalonia is a prosperous region in northeastern Spain with a long history of nationalist sentiment. Popular support for independence in Catalonia (source Spanish) has risen significantly since Spain's economic crisis in the early 2010s, but it remains just short of 50 percent. However, the country's political representation system — which favors nationalist parties — has allowed pro-independence coalitions to rule there for almost a decade, putting a lot of pressure on Madrid to allow them to vote on breaking away from Spain.
The PM knows the pardons are deeply unpopular. Just a week ago, tens of thousands of Spaniards who defend Spanish unity against Catalonia's dream of secession gathered in Madrid to protest the decision, calling out the PM for pandering to Catalan nationalists. Most Spaniards oppose granting clemency to those who attempted to break away from Spain: a recent survey found that more than 60 percent are against the move. (By contrast, roughly 70 percent of Catalans say it's the right thing to do.)
So, why is he doing this now? Sánchez, who needs the votes of Catalan nationalist parties in the Spanish parliament to stay in power, likely hopes the pardons can keep his already fragile coalition government intact long enough to get most of the population vaccinated against COVID and for the economy to rebound — thanks mainly to EU pandemic recovery funds — ahead of Spain's next general election in December 2023. He also hopes the Catalan "problem" might fade away as soon as Spaniards go on summer vacation.
But his critics know the pardons are hurting Sánchez. Since the government signaled its intention to grant the pardons, the ruling PSOE party — half of whose voters oppose them — has been slipping in the polls and losing ground to the PP, the main conservative opposition party. Both the PP and the far-right Vox party, which rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2017 crisis because it advocates for a much tougher line on Catalonia, will surely gain more support if the current row over the pardons drags on.
Also, Spain's top court, which oversaw the months-long sedition trial, has unanimously rejected the pardons because the politicians have shown no remorse. Although that ruling is non-binding, the court's opinion will be cited in future legal challenges that could go all the way to the constitutional court, which will have the final say and could send the politicians back to prison.
What's more, the pardons are not enough for Catalan separatists. Pere Aragonès, the head of Catalonia's regional government, has welcomed the reprieves as a "first step" toward reconciliation. But he insists on an amnesty that would completely absolve the "political prisoners," as pro-independence Catalans refer to the jailed politicians, of all responsibility over actions that, in their opinion, were political in nature.
Meanwhile, more hardcore separatist leaders say they won't make any concessions until Madrid grants Catalans the right to decide their own future in a legal and binding plebiscite, similar to how the UK allowed Scots to vote on independence in 2014. One of them is the influential Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president and current MEP who fled Spain to avoid prosecution and now lives in Belgium.
Either way, it's a bold move for Sánchez, who faces an impossible choice. On the one hand, he's making an unpopular decision that could hurt him and the PSOE politically. On the other hand, his minority government cannot survive without parliamentary support from Catalan nationalist parties.
Looking ahead. Those who oppose the pardons fear they will only encourage pro-independence Catalan leaders to try again to secede in the near future. But Sánchez is playing the long game, and Catalan nationalists know they have a lot to lose with him out of office.