Thousands of supporters of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) implored, on Saturday April 27, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who says he is considering resigning after the opening of an investigation against his wife, not to leave his post.
In power since 2018, the head of government, aged 52, took Spain by surprise on Wednesday by putting his resignation in the balance after the announcement by a Madrid court of the opening of this investigation for influence peddling and corruption, following a complaint from an association close to the extreme right.
On Thursday, the prosecution requested the closure of the investigation but the judge in charge of the case has not yet revealed his intentions.
In the meantime, some 12,500 people, according to the Madrid prefecture, gathered at midday to express their support in front of the PSOE headquarters where the leadership of the party was meeting.
“Pedro, president”, “Pedro, don’t give up”, “Spain needs you”, they notably wrote on signs.
“I hope that Sanchez will say on Monday that he is staying,” Sara Domínguez, a thirty-year-old consultant who finds that his government “has taken very good measures for women, LGBT+ people, minorities,” told AFP. .
If he leaves and early elections are called, there is a risk that “the extreme right governs”, in an alliance with the conservative right, and that “this will set us back in terms of rights and freedoms,” said José María Díez, a 44-year-old civil servant from Valladolid, in the north of the country.
Pedro Sanchez assures that the investigation opened against his wife is the latest illustration of a campaign of destabilization orchestrated by “a coalition of right-wing and far-right interests” who “do not accept the verdict of the ballot boxes”.
Coming second in the legislative elections on July 23 behind his conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijóo (Popular Party, PP), the socialist managed to be reappointed in November for a new four-year term thanks to the support of the radical left and the Basque and regionalist parties. Catalans.
Gathered inside the party headquarters, the leaders of the party came to greet the crowd and also called on the Prime Minister not to resign. The ministers closest to Pedro Sanchez assure that the latter did not consult them before putting his resignation in the balance.
“President, stay. Pedro, stay, we are with you, we must move forward, we must continue to move this country forward, Spain cannot go backwards,” declared the number two in the government, the Minister of the Budget, María Jesús Montero.
The investigation against Pedro Sanchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, focuses in particular, according to the online media El Confidencial, on the links she established with the Globalia group, sponsor of the foundation in which she worked, at the time where Air Europa, an airline belonging to Globalia, negotiated with the Sanchez government to obtain public aid.
No one in Spain ventures to predict the decision that the Prime Minister might take.
If he decides to stay in his post, he could choose to submit to a question of confidence in order to show the opposition that he enjoys the support of a majority of MPs.
If he resigns, early legislative elections could be called this summer, with or without him at the head of the PSOE.
The right-wing opposition is convinced that the socialist will not resign and denounces “victimization” and a “spectacle”.
The Prime Minister’s announcement is “tactical and electoral”, said Saturday the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, who believes that Pedro Sanchez thinks “to obtain, by victimizing himself, support from which he does not benefit today”.
(With AFP)
