With scrutiny growing, Pedro Sánchez fights to contain corruption fallout

Seven years ago last month, a fresh-faced Spanish opposition leader lamented that a long-festering graft case involving the country’s ruling, conservative People’s party (PP) had “seriously damaged the health of our democracy” and plunged the country’s politics into what he termed a “corruption thriller”.

So rotten had things become that the same opposition leader, one Pedro Sánchez, felt compelled to file a no-confidence motion against the PP government. The gamble paid off, Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) won power and he became the prime minister.

Fast forward to last week and, while history may not quite be repeating itself, it is rhyming rather disconcertingly.

Last Thursday found a contrite and uncharacteristically stressed-looking Sánchez appearing before the media at the PSOE’s Madrid base to apologise to socialist voters for the grim corruption scandal that has engulfed his party and his administration.

Months and weeks of pressure had exploded the previous day when reports emerged that the Guardia Civil’s anti-corruption unit had explosive recordings of the PSOE’s organisational secretary, Santos Cerdán, discussing taking kickbacks on public works contracts. The party’s defence of Cerdán – who maintains his innocence – was short-lived. Addressing the media hours after the contents of the recordings were made public, Sánchez said he had asked for the organisational secretary’s resignation and had ordered an external audit of the PSOE’s accounts.

“Like any other person, I have my virtues and I have many shortcomings,” said the PM. “But I have always believed in working for clean politics and fair play in politics.”

Sánchez critics might argue that his efforts to take a bucket and a mop to the filthy corners of Spanish politics have been resoundingly unsuccessful. Cerdán is not the only administration figure under suspicion. The former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, and one of his minister’s aides, Koldo García, also appear in the police recordings and both are being investigated over corruption allegations. They deny any wrongdoing.

Add to that the corruption investigations into Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, and his brother, David Sánchez – who also deny doing anything wrong – and the scale of the PM’s problems becomes very clear. While it may well turn out that Sánchez and his family are, as he insists, victims of a baseless media and far-right smear campaign, his party and his administration would appear to have been blighted by the kind of behaviour he deplored when it happened in the PP. It is, to put it mildly, not a good look.

Even so, Sánchez has maintained that there will be no snap election and that Spain will not return to the polls until the scheduled vote in 2027. By Monday, he appeared more confident, daring the PP to bring a confidence vote against him – knowing full well they don’t have the votes – and contrasting his swift response to corruption to their past behaviour.

The old political saw that you never bet against Pedro Sánchez – the perennial survivor of Spanish politics – has held true until now. But he has never looked quite as nervous as he did last week. His big fear now will be that there could be more bombshells on the way as the police and the courts continue their investigations.

A chink of insight into the Iberian power cut

This week did, however, bring a glimmer of good news for the government in Spain; a belated light at the end of the blackout. On Tuesday – much to the disappointment of Sánchez’s political adversaries and those who oppose his administration’s plan to ramp up Spain’s renewable energy use – a government-commissioned report revealed the cause of the unprecedented power cut that hit Spain and Portugal at the end of April.

According to the expert report, the huge outage was not down to shadowy government experiments or an excess of renewable energy sources but to surging voltages triggering “a chain reaction of disconnections” that shut down the power network. Presenting the findings, Sara Aagesen, Spain’s environment minister, laid the blame at the doors of the country’s national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, which did not have enough thermal power stations online to control the surge. She also said that some of the power-generating companies who are paid to manage and absorb voltage surges had failed to do so. The necessary lessons, Aagesen added, would be learned.

Power. Always a tricky business.

Until next week.

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