By Victoria Waldersee, Javi West Larrañaga and Charlie Devereux
MADRID, May 29 (Reuters) – Eight years after ousting a corruption-mired, centre-right government on the promise of cleaning up politics, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is running out of road as graft accusations stack up against his party and family.
Lauded abroad by liberals for standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump and calling out atrocities in Gaza, at home Sanchez trails in the polls and is coming under fire even from allies for the string of corruption cases making their way through Spain’s courts.
Sanchez himself has not been named in any of the cases to date and has said they are a part of a campaign to oust him.
There is a long tradition in Spain of the two political parties that have alternated in power taking advantage of the levers of patronage that they control when in office, said Miriam Gonzalez, a Spanish lawyer and founder of España Mejor, a platform for engaging civil society in politics.
Alberto Feijoo, leader of the conservative People’s Party that was kicked out in the 2018 no confidence vote, quipped that there were so many cases hovering over Sanchez that when police on Wednesday searched his Socialist Party’s (PSOE) headquarters, Spaniards had no idea to which case it was related.
Sanchez said his party was cooperating fully with the investigation.
KEY CONFIDANTS INVESTIGATED
Key confidants, including Sanchez’s number three in the PSOE and his former transport minister, are being investigated in several cases involving kickbacks for public works, or oil and gas contracts, and the procurement of masks during the pandemic.
They have denied wrongdoing.
Last week, Spain’s High Court said it was investigating former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero for allegedly leading a network that profited from lobbying public authorities on behalf of third parties, such as airline Plus Ultra. He denies the claims.
That case is particularly damaging for Sanchez because of Zapatero’s role as a mentor, said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quiros, an economist and president of Freemarket Corporate Intelligence.
“Zapatero is Sanchez’s ideological father,” he said. “They are two sides of the same coin.”
Some cases, such as the trial of Sanchez’s brother David and of his wife Begona Gomez for alleged influence peddling were pursued following complaints filed by anti-graft campaign group Manos Limpias – Clean Hands – whose leader has links to the far-right.
That led Sanchez to complain of a politicised “mud machine” aimed at undermining his government – a perception shared by Socialist voters, said political analyst Eduardo Bayon.
David Sanchez’s lawyer on Wednesday called for the case against him to be closed, calling the allegations “pure lies”. Begona Gomez has also denied the claims.
NOT UP TO THE JOB
Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar, a Euro MP and former justice minister under Zapatero, said that some of the accusations levied against former government officials were “absolutely repulsive” but that none implicated Sanchez directly.
He acknowledged the need for reform to limit the number and monitor the quality of political appointees in government administration.
“There have been a number of political appointees that clearly were not suitable, were not up to the job,” he said.
In March, Sanchez was the only major EU leader with a positive net approval rating, according to a Polling Europe Euroscope survey published in April.
Praise from progressives abroad has done little to boost Sanchez’s support at home, with the PP ahead in polls with 31.6% of the vote compared to around 28.1% for the PSOE and 17.7% for far-right Vox, according to an early May poll of polls by Electrocracia.
The government has ruled out calling elections before its term ends in August 2027 and is not seen as inclined to submit itself to a confidence vote.
That leaves a no confidence vote brought by opposition parties as the only possible way for them to remove the Socialists from power. Feijoo on Thursday urged smaller parties still supporting the Socialists to do more than “abstain from the problem”.
But ousting the PSOE could usher in a PP government that would likely need Vox’s support to govern. Many parties are reluctant to back a far-right return to power following the end of Francisco Franco’s fascist regime in the 1970s.
A source at Catalan pro-independence party Junts said it had not been approached by the PP about a no-confidence vote and it wouldn’t support anything that risked handing power to the PP and Vox.
Aitor Esteban, leader of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), said the legislature had “reached its end”, even as he said his party would not support a no-confidence vote.
“We find ourselves in a state of limbo where some judges lie and some politicians steal,” said Gabriel Rufian, leader of the Catalan separatist party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and a sometime Socialist ally. “People are deeply disillusioned, and the only thing preventing this government from falling is that the alternative is infinitely worse.”
(Reporting Victoria Waldersee, Javi West, Joan Faus; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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