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Prime minister Pedro Sánchez. SUR
The Euro Zone opinion

Not looking good

For a prime minister primarily concerned about image, things don't get much worse, writes columnist Mark Nayler

Mark Nayler

Malaga

Friday, 20 June 2025, 15:03

For a prime minister primarily concerned about image, things don't get much worse. On Monday, the Socialist party's former organisational secretary, Santos Cerdán, resigned his seat in congress after it emerged that the Guardia Civil has found evidence that he accepted kickbacks for public contracts during the pandemic. Cerdán's resignation from the PSOE last week prompted his former ally, Pedro Sánchez, to apologise to the nation for having trusted him.

As if that weren't bad enough (which it is), a report published by the Spanish Refugee Commission this week, ahead of World Refugee Day today, revealed that Spain is second-from-last in the EU for granting asylum requests. Of the 167,366 it received in 2024, only two in ten were approved. This is obviously not as bad as the most recent corruption scandal, but it hardly boosts the migrant-friendly image the government wants to project. Overall, the value of Sánchez's reputational stock is plummeting.

All the talk now, both in the media and presumably within the cabinet, is about survival strategy - how the Socialists can serve out the remaining two years of their term, despite everything that's happening. No doubt they'll find a way; but I've never understood why Sánchez is praised for his ability to escape tight situations. Why would anyone admire a politician who stubbornly clings to power, regardless of whether anyone wants him? The interesting question is not whether Sánchez can stay on, because the answer is obvious; it's why on earth he'd want to.

Governing has become impossible. Sánchez's days are now spent dealing with the fall-out from corruption allegations affecting his party. When they're not occupied with those, Sánchez and his team are busy trying to make Catalan separatists happy. Until the Socialists have done their bidding, the Catalans withhold their ludicrously over-priced votes.

But even this arrangement doesn't seem to work, because the separatists have repeatedly blocked national budgets. Back in March, it emerged that last year's budget (itself pulled over from 2023), will be rolled over for 2025, supposedly so the government can concentrate on a blueprint for 2026. But if Sánchez is unable to secure approval for next year's budget, as seems likely, Spain would enter 2027 with a spending plan more than three years old. Felipe González, a former Socialist prime minister of Spain, has said that the budget farce should already have triggered early elections, and that Sánchez is behaving unconstitutionally.

Finally, let's not forget that marginalised group, that downtrodden, abused faction of society so often forgotten by its politicians: the Spanish electorate. Citizens do not install prime ministers or governments so that they can spend their days, and taxpayers' money, clearing up messes of their own making. That's not governing. It's self-generating reputational management - and nobody asked for it.

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