The first of many trials awaiting Pedro Sánchez’ government has taken place. The Supreme Court has sentenced José Luis Ábalos, former Minister of Transport and former Secretary General of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Party), to 24 years in prison. Ábalos’ sentence is, in any case, a sentence against the entire Sánchez administration. The former minister was Pedro Sánchez’ closest confidant and his greatest ally both in his rise to the leadership of the PSOE and in his ascent to the presidency of the government, which he achieved through a vote of no confidence against Mariano Rajoy. In fact, during that vote of no confidence, which was falsely justified by alleged corruption in the PP (Partido Popular) government, it was Ábalos himself who delivered Pedro Sánchez’ main speech in parliament. Poetic justice: those who came to power by falsely denouncing corruption in the centre-right government will ultimately fall because of their own corruption.
Sánchez’ situation is untenable. The first of his associates has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for crimes of organised crime, bribery, embezzlement, and influence peddling. Sánchez’ brother is in the dock, accused of alleged crimes of administrative misconduct and influence peddling. And Pedro Sánchez’ wife, Begoña Gómez, is awaiting trial for influence peddling, corruption in business, embezzlement of public funds, and misappropriation; furthermore, the judge has just prohibited her from leaving the country and has confiscated her passport due to risk of flight.
In addition, Santos Cerdán, the PSOE’s secretary of organisation appointed by Sánchez after Ábalos’ resignation, is being investigated for ramifications of the case that also led to the imprisonment of Ábalos and his adviser, Koldo García. This month also sees the trial in the Leire Case, which investigates the media and reputational smear campaign launched by La Moncloa (the prime minister’s office) to intimidate judges investigating Sánchez’ inner circle, as well as journalists and businesspeople. The judicial investigation against former Socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is also ongoing, with allegations of influence peddling. Not to mention that the attorney general appointed by Sánchez has also been convicted of revealing secrets, following the leak of confidential information concerning Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s boyfriend, intended to harm the president of the Community of Madrid.
At this point, no one doubts that Pedro Sánchez was the leader of these schemes and that he was aware of these crimes, especially given the statements of some of those involved and because his name, initials, or nickname “Number One” appears in messages and conversations in police reports. What is missing now is something that can legally prove that he was not only the leader of the schemes but that he acted as such.
If Sánchez’ downfall is not brought about by legal proceedings, the unlikely alternative is the withdrawal of parliamentary support from his communist and separatist partners. This is improbable precisely because the communists entered the Council of Ministers for the first time in Spanish democracy thanks to Sánchez, while the separatists have obtained enormous political benefits they had not received before from any other government, including the pardon of all those who attempted the separatist coup in Catalonia in 2017.
Meanwhile, several sources have revealed that Sánchez has been meeting in recent days with his closest collaborators to devise a new defence strategy, once again focused on a war of attrition: the first consequence of this strategy has been a fierce campaign of personal and professional defamation against the judge trying his wife, Begoña Gómez, a campaign joined by all media outlets on the government payroll. Sánchez’ other line of defence is to distance himself from those with final convictions, as when he claimed he was unaware of his friend José Luis Ábalos’ corruption and had no knowledge of his lavish lifestyle and expensive vices. However, it is highly unlikely he would adopt the same stance if his brother or wife were convicted.
One of the opposition leaders, Santiago Abascal (VOX), offered the boldest analysis of the situation earlier this week, warning that “Sánchez is even more dangerous” as judicial investigations progress and convictions, such as that of former minister Ábalos, begin to emerge. Sánchez defies any political logic known in Western democracies. No leader could even attempt to cling to power while completely surrounded by serious judicial investigations, but he does not abide by the conventional rules of politics. Sánchez would only resign and call early elections if he were certain of winning them again. Such a scenario is unlikely today, even though the mass regularisation of immigrants and, above all, the manipulation of the electoral register through the controversial ‘grandchildren law’—which will allow foreigners who have never even set foot in Spain to vote—are precisely aimed at creating an electoral surprise in his favour.
Nevertheless, judicial pressure on the government could force an early end. Víctor de Aldama, one of the businessmen investigated for corruption in the case that led to the conviction of José Luis Ábalos, decided from day one to cooperate with the justice system in order to obtain a reduced sentence, and he is proving to be the key figure in Sánchez’ downfall, providing numerous pieces of evidence and information. According to Aldama himself, the government first tried to buy his silence with an “exorbitant sum” of money, and then, when he refused, tried to make him the scapegoat for the entire case. It is worth remembering that, at the beginning of the investigation, Aldama was repeatedly threatened, and his car was found with its windows shot out in a mafia-style warning.
This week, Víctor de Aldama told the media that he would provide definitive evidence in the coming days (specifically mentioning “a photograph”) implicating Pedro Sánchez himself in the various corruption cases under investigation. It is worth noting that, to this day, none of the things Aldama has predicted or announced have turned out to be false: they have all come true to the letter.
In the midst of this surreal situation of institutional capture in Spain, with a government lacking popular support and devoting all its time to legal defence, the deafening silence and inaction of Brussels is striking. Those who fabricated a thousand nonexistent reasons to pursue Viktor Orbán, and a thousand ways to pressure him into falling, remain mysteriously silent in the face of Pedro Sánchez’ alleged authoritarian drift, corruption, and persecution of judges and journalists. A question that no one has been able to answer is increasingly echoing in public opinion: what is the purpose of the EU if it does nothing to prevent one of its members from being forcibly turned into a tyranny that looks as African as it does Bolivarian?