Pedro Sánchez’s misguided one-man protest

After five days spent pondering his future as prime minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez said he was ready to continue in the job “with more strength, if possible”. He is going to need it. His one-man protest against what he called the “degradation of public life” has only raised the temperature in Spain’s already superheated politics and brought more opprobrium from his opponents.

Sánchez cancelled public appearances and shut himself in his office last week after a judge began a corruption probe targeting his wife, Begoña Gómez. According to media reports, she obtained sponsorship for an academic centre where she worked from an airline group just as it was given a pandemic-related bailout by the government. In another university job, she wrote a reference for a businessman who won a government contract to help train young unemployed. No evidence has emerged that Gómez exerted influence on her husband or his colleagues or that the businesses received special treatment, though there was at least an appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Sánchez’s reaction was to take a timeout and rail against an ultraconservative “strategy of harassment and destruction” perpetrated against him and his wife. His choice of protest was an extraordinary act of self-indulgence for any prime minister, let alone one normally as thick-skinned as Sánchez.

Returning to work on Monday, the premier called for an end to the mud-slinging and a return of dignity and respect to political life. It was the right call but delivered in the wrong way.

The political atmosphere in Spain is one of the most toxic in Europe. The failed Catalan independence push in 2017 and the Spanish nationalist backlash it triggered have accentuated the poison and polarisation. Sánchez’s opponents have unfairly questioned his legitimacy since he took power in 2018 after ousting the centre-right government in a no-confidence vote.

The rancour has increased since last summer when the centre-right came first in the parliamentary election but failed to assemble a majority. Sánchez’s socialists held on to power with the backing of Catalan secessionist parties, in return for the promise of an amnesty for crimes related to the independence bid. The deal outraged the right and even many on the left. The conservative opposition, egged on by the far right, has since thrown every piece of mud at Sánchez they could find. But the socialists, and their allies in government and the media, are not afraid of dishing it out themselves.

The prime minister rightly called for a “collective reflection” on cleaning up politics. Yet he offered no proposals of his own for doing so or for raising ethical standards in government. On Tuesday he hinted at tightening control of the media, through stricter enforcement of public advertising rules, a potential slippery slope to censorship.

Sánchez’s impromptu protest gave the unfortunate impression that his appeal for a gentler politics was about getting him and his wife out of a spot of bother. Worse, Sánchez blamed a global reactionary movement for the degradation of political life while lauding his socialist supporters as the saviours of democracy. It is exactly the kind of polarising rhetoric — you are either with us or against us — that Spain needs less of.

Spain was once a model of democratic modernity in Europe, with its dynamic municipal and regional governments, advanced social rights and gender parity in government. The Spanish right and its allies in the media have a long history of delegitimising its political opponents. Poison is now consuming the national body politic. Sánchez is right to want a cure. But he needs to offer solutions rather than stunts.