If we combined the Anglo-Saxon tradition of naming the person of the year with the Eastern tradition of assigning each year an animal from the Chinese zodiac, 2023 would undoubtedly be the year of the Sanxe Dog. Be careful not to confuse with Pedro Sánchez. I explain.
When Pedro Sánchez was just Pedro Sánchez he seemed like a stuffy politician. Some cartoonist drew him as a doll in the hands of Susana Díaz. With her hand in hand, or vice versa, Sánchez arrived at the general secretary of the PSOE. The journalist Jesús Maraña, in his book In the background on the left, attributes this sentence to the last socialist president of Andalusia: “It doesn’t work, but it works for us.” You just have to see where Díaz and Sánchez are now to gauge how the story changed.
It was precisely this type of rudeness that was the driving force behind Sánchez’s first evolution. Without so much contempt it would be impossible to understand it. That general secretary that others thought they managed, began to reveal himself as a guy who was not only tall and handsome, but who could also be tenacious and ambitious.
From his defenestration at the head of the PSOE to his victory in the primaries, Sánchez went from humiliated to feared. The motion of censure that leads him to the presidency of the Government continues to add attributes to him, not always positive: cold, calculating, with no principles other than his own, and if they don’t work, he has others. Sánchez, president, goes from not sleeping if he had Podemos in key ministries to having Iglesias as vice president. He goes from “pardons, not at first” to getting Junqueras and company out of jail.
Sánchez earns the title of person most hated by the Spanish political, media and economic right. And also for Felipe and Guerra, with what that means. Together they exalt his figure. Sánchez the illegitimate, Sánchez the felon, Sánchez the traitor, Sánchez the autocrat. The campaign stalls. Sánchez does not defend himself, and the PSOE is devastated in the 28-M elections.
That night, May 28 to 29, his great transformation begins. Sánchez advances the elections to 23J. “Political suicide,” they say. He goes to all kinds of programs: from Alsina to La Pija and La Quinqui, including El Hormiguero.
His enemies try to denigrate him. They exploit the unfortunate “let Txapote vote for you.” They cross all the red lines by calling him Dog, in a play on words with his first name. What seemed like the mother of all offenses, Sánchez turns into a slogan. He himself is in charge of clarifying to Julia Otero that he is not Perro Sánchez, but Perro Sanxe. And he turns the score around. Perro Sanxe gets a million more votes, agrees with seven parties and becomes president again. Amnesty arrives. Another “where I said I say”. The right explodes and stops playing with words. “Pedro Sánchez son of a bitch,” is sung in Ferraz.
The polls punish him, as the ones prior to 23J already did. But Pedro Sánchez is becoming more and more Perro Sanxe. He says what no one had said before Netanyahu. He swallows the photo with Puigdemont, while he hangs out with the European right in Brussels.
Sanxe shows more and more flow in interviews. Nobody remembers the cardboard anymore. Dog Sanxe improvises, lets himself rub a lottery ticket on his back and the number runs out. And he chooses Jorge Javier Vázquez as the presenter of his book, where he even allows himself to make jokes about how bad he was in the first debate with Feijóo.
Perro Sanxe has become an evolved version of Sánchez. As if it were a Pokémon. Just as Pichu evolved into Pikachu, Pedro Sánchez has evolved into Sanxe Dog, and his enemies, that angry mass, have not yet found the kryptonite that will kill Clark Kent.