JI decided to continue” at the head of the government, said in a serious tone the 52-year-old socialist leader, in power since 2018, in a solemn nine-minute speech delivered on the steps of the Moncloa Palace, the official seat of the presidency of the Spanish government. .
Sánchez had remained silent since the announcement on Wednesday by a Madrid court of the opening of a preliminary investigation for “influence peddling” and “corruption” against his wife, Begoña Gómez. Stunning the country, he wrote a four-page letter to the Spanish in which he explained that he was considering resigning to protect his family.
Denying Monday having acted in this way by “political calculation”, he called on the country to undertake “a collective reflection” on the polarization of political life, in order to prevent “disinformation to direct the political debate”. “Either we say ‘enough’ or the degradation of public life will condition our future and condemn us as a country“, he added.
Absolutely unprecedented, Sánchez had suspended all his public activities since Wednesday, when he was notably due to launch the campaign for the regional elections on May 12 in Catalonia on Thursday evening, a vote of national scope in which his Socialist Party hopes to oust the separatists from 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.
An investigation targeting Ms. Sánchez
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.
She wears in particular, according to the online media The Confidentialon 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 Sánchez government to obtain 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.
Sánchez wants to see in this complaint a new illustration of a campaign of destabilization 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 wrote on 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 government leader cannot make a spectacle of himself like a teenager so that everyone starts running after him begging him not to leave and not to get angry.”, quipped the leader of the Popular Party (right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
