The Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union, which begins this Saturday July 1, was to be his consecration. The political future of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hangs on a quit or double: the result of the early legislative elections that will take place on July 23. In power since 2018, the 51-year-old socialist leader preferred to dissolve the Spanish Parliament after the rout of his party in the local elections on May 28.
To cut short the lamentations and reproaches, but also to avoid sinking his coalition government which he formed in 2020 with the radical left Unidas Podemos, a turbulent partner who took a slap in the last elections.
Some hailed the political courage of Pedro Sanchez to roll the dice again. Others saw it as a tactic to avoid a rebellion within the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Europe, plagued by the rise of the extreme right, had until then observed Spain as a laboratory for the union of the left.
If the polls give a large lead to the People’s Party (PP, right), which does not rule out the idea of governing with the far-right Vox party, Pedro Sanchez does not admit defeat. Nicknamed the “Phoenix”, it has risen many times from its ashes, after being politically dead. If the right campaigns with the slogan “Or Sánchez, or Spain”, it proudly displays its results: record increase in the minimum wage of nearly 47% in five years, realignment of pensions on inflation, extension of rights precarious workers or the legalization of euthanasia.
Two historic debacles
Whatever the outcome of the ballot, Pedro Sanchez is convinced that he has made history, if only for having exhumed the dictator Franco, in October 2019, from the mausoleum monument of El Valle de los Caídos, washing Thus “an affront to Spanish democracy”. “I will be asked if the trip was worth the trouble and I will answer yes (…) and I’m not willing for him to end up here,” he launched, on June 8, to the 3,000 people gathered for his first meeting in Dos Hermanas, a socialist stronghold in the suburbs of Seville.
Before taking the helm of Spain, Pedros Sánchez had to endure two historic electoral debacles six months apart, during the legislative elections of 2015 and 2016, and face competition from the radical left party Podemos, born of the “indignant” movement.
Very minority within the PSOE, he also had to stand up to the socialist old guard, in 2016, which preferred to let the conservative Mariano Rajoy, who came in first, come to power, rather than to forge a majority with Podemos and the separatists. He paid the price when he was pressured into resigning as party general secretary in October of the same year.
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