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After spending five days reflecting on his future as Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez said he was ready to continue at work “with more force, if possible.” He’s going to need it. His one-man protest against what he called the “degradation of public life” has only raised the temperature in already overheated Spanish politics and provoked more opprobrium from his opponents.
Sanchez public appearances canceled and locked himself in his office last week after a judge launched a corruption investigation against his wife, Begoña Gómez. According to media reports, he obtained sponsorship for an academic center where he worked from an airline group just as the government granted him a pandemic-related bailout. In another college assignment, he wrote a reference for an entrepreneur who won a government contract to help train unemployed youth. No evidence has emerged that Gómez exerted influence over her husband or her colleagues or that the companies received special treatment, although there was at least the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.
YestonchezTrump’s reaction was to take a time out and denounce an ultraconservative “strategy of harassment and destruction” perpetrated against him and his wife. Choosing him to protest was an extraordinary act of self-indulgence for any prime minister, let alone one as normally callous as Sánchez.
Returning to work on Monday, the prime minister called for an end to smears and a return to dignity and respect in political life. It was the right decision, but made in the wrong way.
The political environment in Spain is one of the most toxic in Europe. The failed attempt at Catalan independence in 2017 and the Spanish nationalist reaction it unleashed have accentuated the poison and polarization. Sánchez’s opponents have unfairly questioned his legitimacy since he took power in 2018 after toppling the center-right government in a vote of no confidence.
The rancor has grown since last summer, when the centre-right came first in parliamentary elections but failed to muster a majority. Sánchez’s socialists remained in power with the support of Catalan secessionist parties, in exchange for the promise of an amnesty for crimes related to the independence attempt. The agreement outraged the right and even many on the left. Since then, the conservative opposition, incited by the far right, has thrown all the mud he could find at Sánchez. But the socialists and their allies in government and the media aren’t afraid to dish it out themselves.
The prime minister rightly called for “collective reflection” on political cleansing. However, he offered no proposals of his own to do so or to raise ethical standards in government. On Tuesday he hinted at tighter control of the media, through stricter enforcement of rules on public advertising, a possible slippery slope to censorship.
Sánchez’s impromptu protest gave the unfortunate impression that his call for gentler politics was intended to get him and his wife off the hook. Worse still, Sánchez blamed a global reactionary movement for the degradation of political life while praising his socialist supporters as the saviors of democracy. It’s exactly the kind of polarizing rhetoric (you’re 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 delegitimizing their political opponents. The poison is now consuming the national body politic. Sánchez is right to want a cure. But he needs to offer solutions instead of tricks.