Spain’s Pedro Sanchez on Monday said he would stay on as prime minister after threatening to stand down over what he has denounced as a campaign of political harassment by the right.
“I have decided to stay,” he said in a highly-anticipated public address that drew a line under days of political uncertainty that had gripped the country for the past five days.
In office since 2018, the 52-year-old Socialist leader had on Wednesday written a letter to the public saying he was taking time out to mull his possible resignation after a Madrid court confirmed a preliminary probe into his wife Begona Gomez for suspected influence peddling and corruption.
Denying the move was a “political calculation”, Sanchez said he needed “to stop and reflect” on the growing polarisation within politics which he said was increasingly being driven by “deliberate disinformation”.
“For too long we’ve let this filth corrupt our political and public life with toxic methods that were unimaginable just a few years ago… Do we really want this for Spain?” he asked.
“I have acted out of a clear conviction: either we say ‘enough is enough’ or this degradation of public life will define our future and condemn us as a country.”
He said his decision to stay on had been “decisively influenced” by the mass show of support outside the Madrid headquarters of his Socialist party, where thousands of emotional supporters had chanted: “Pedro, stay!”
The public prosecutor’s office on Thursday asked that the investigation into Begona Gomez be closed but Sanchez, an expert in political survival who has made a career out of taking political gambles, held his silence.
He had been due to launch his party’s campaign on Thursday for the May 12 Catalonia regional elections in which his Socialists are hoping to oust the pro-independence forces from power.
– ‘Harassment’ campaign –
The far-right leader of the anti-corruption pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) filed a complaint, prompting the court to launch an investigation into Sanchez’s wife.
The group, which has previously filed a long list of unsuccessful lawsuits against politicians, stated it had based its complaint on media reports and could not vouch for their veracity shortly after Sanchez’s bombshell letter to X was released.
The online news outlet El Confidencial said that the case was about her connections to multiple private businesses that were awarded public contracts or received government funding, even though the court withheld specifics of the case.
Because Sanchez’s minority government needs the backing of the far-left and separatist parties in Catalonia and Basque Country in order to enact laws, he has been demonized by right-wing opponents and the media.
His decision to pardon hundreds of Catalan separatists who were being sued for their roles in the region’s unsuccessful 2017 independence bid has infuriated them particularly.
Parliament must still ultimately approve the amnesty before it can be implemented in exchange for the support of Catalan separatist parties.
Since Wednesday, the opposition has made fun of Sanchez’s decision to step down from his official responsibilities in an effort to energize his followers.
“A head of government cannot act like a teenager and have everyone chasing after him, pleading with him not to go and not to get upset,” Alberto Nunez Feijoo, the leader of the Popular Party and a right-wing opposition figure, stated on Thursday.
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