End of suspense. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Monday that he had decided to remain at the head of the government despite the “campaign of discredit” of which he accuses the right-wing opposition and of which the latest illustration was, according to him, the opening of a judicial investigation against his wife.
“I decided to continue” at the head of the government, said the 52-year-old socialist leader, in power since 2018, who had remained silent since the announcement on Wednesday of the opening of this investigation against his woman for “corruption” and “influence peddling”.
Denying on Monday having acted in this way out of “political calculation”, he called on the country to undertake “collective reflection” on the polarization of political life, in order to prevent “disinformation from directing the political debate”. “Or we say enough or the degradation of public life will condition our future and condemn us as a country,” he added.
He had suspended all his political activities
Absolutely unprecedented, Mr. Sánchez had suspended all his public activities since Wednesday, when he was notably due to launch on Thursday evening the campaign for the regional elections on May 12 in Catalonia, a vote of national scope in which his Socialist Party hopes to drive out the separatists. power.
Chanting “Pedro, stay!”, thousands of supporters gathered on Saturday in front of the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid to ask him not to leave his post.
Classification requested by the prosecution
The investigation against Pedro Sánchez’s wife, placed under the seal of investigative secrecy, was opened following a complaint from the association “Manos limpias” (Clean Hands), a collective close to the ‘far right. It relates in particular, according to the online media El Confidencial, to the links established by Begoña Gómez with the Globalia group, sponsor of the foundation in which she worked, at the time when Air Europa, an airline belonging to Globalia, was negotiating with the government Sánchez obtaining public aid.
This company actually received, in November 2020, 475 million euros, from a 10 billion fund intended to support strategic companies in difficulty due to the pandemic. But dozens of others then benefited from aid, including several of its competitors (Iberia, Vueling, Volotea, etc.).
The prosecution requested on Thursday that this investigation be closed, while Manos Limpias admitted that his complaint was based solely on press articles, but the judge in charge of the case has not yet revealed his intentions.
“Teenage show”
Pedro Sánchez wants to see in this complaint a new illustration of a destabilization campaign carried out against him by “a coalition of right-wing and far-right interests” who “do not accept the verdict of the ballot boxes”, he said. wrote Wednesday in a long letter posted online on the social network X.
Since his arrival in power six years ago, the legitimacy of the socialist leader has always been questioned by the right and the far right, who have never forgiven him for having been brought to power by the far left and the political parties. Basques and Catalans as part of a motion of censure against his conservative predecessor Mariano Rajoy, weighed down by a corruption scandal.
The political context has become even more tense in recent months, when Pedro Sánchez, who came second in the July 23 elections behind his conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijóo, nevertheless managed to be returned to power by Parliament in November thanks to the support of the Catalan independence parties in exchange for an amnesty law for separatists involved in the attempted secession of Catalonia in 2017.
This law was passed at first reading by deputies in March and should be definitively adopted at the end of May. The right-wing opposition has been ridiculing Pedro Sánchez since Wednesday, accusing him of wanting to pass himself off as a victim.
“A head of government cannot make a spectacle of himself like a teenager so that everyone starts running after him, imploring him not to leave and not to get angry,” quipped the leader of the Popular Party ( right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo.