The President of the Government returned to Madrid this Monday from his trip to Morocco where he spent a few days with his family. His next destination has not been long in coming and the president has traveled to Lanzarote where he will remain for a few days at the official residence of La Mareta accompanied by his family, in the municipality of Teguise.
Sánchez has arrived on the island before 7:00 p.m. local time (8:00 p.m. peninsular) and for now it is unknown how many days he will remain in Lanzarote and if he will develop any public agenda, even if it is a private trip.
Since he was sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time, Sánchez has repeatedly chosen the La Mareta residence to spend his vacations; the last one, last April, during Holy Week.
The building where he is staying is a complex built in his day for King Hussein of Jordan, who gave it as a gift to King Juan Carlos I at the end of the eighties.
Some time ago the Casa del Rey made this residence available to National Heritage, in which heads of State or Government have stayed, such as the German chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder, the president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, the Czech president Václav Havel or the Spanish presidents José María Aznar and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as well as Sánchez himself.
Before Lanzarote, Sánchez spent a few days on vacation in Marrakech. The staff of the president’s usual summer residence awaited his arrival last Tuesday when, by surprise, he was seen together with his wife, Begoña Gómez, walking like another tourist through the Jemaa el Fna square .
Sánchez, who traveled on a commercial airliner to the Marrakech airport, landed in that Moroccan city to rest with his family before starting the new political year.
After a few days of rest in the Moroccan city, Sánchez and his family have returned to Madrid this morning on a commercial flight “fully paid for”, like the outbound trip, by the president himself, sources from the Executive have indicated.
It was a “strictly private” trip, according to those government sources, and in which no institutional meeting was planned.
According to Moroccan media, the president and his family planned to spend a few days in Marrakech, after which they would visit Chefchaouen, considered the gateway to the Rif mountains, and Tetouan, the former capital of the Spanish protectorate (1912-1956).
The fact that Sánchez chose Morocco has been interpreted as “proof of normalization of relations” by the PSOE, while for the PP it has been a “provocation”, which has also been criticized by the Polisario Front.
The Morocco escapade reached the press when it was published by the Moroccan media, whose information was collected and confirmed by the Spanish media.
