“When someone says they’re leaving, it’s because they’ve already left.” This maxim, attributed to Julio Cortázar, was already used in the PSOE when he confirmed in April 2011, in front of the party’s federal committee, that he would not run for re-election as Prime Minister. “The best is yet to come”, assured Zapatero, after the announcement of his farewell.
The same sentence of the Argentine writer was once again heard among socialist leaders when Zapatero’s successor at the head of the PSOE, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, announced that he was leaving his seat in Congress, in June 2014, and was undertaking the withdrawal of the policy to return to civilian life. “It was worth it”, certified Rubalcaba with his farewell. The veteran socialist leader and former vice-president of the government, who died unexpectedly in 2019, seemed to answer this way, ten years in advance, to the same question that is now being asked by his successor to the leadership of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez.
But the fact that Sánchez has actually already left is what some of his early loyalists suspected, still stunned, while last Wednesday they read with eyes like oranges the surprising letter to the public that the Prime Minister published on their social networks.
“I need to stop and reflect. It is urgent for me to answer the question of whether it is worth it, despite the mud into which the right and ultra-right intend to turn politics. If I have to continue at the head of the Government or give up this high honor”, Sánchez announced in his letter.
Some of his intimates no longer see a possible retreat, and interpret that the head of the Executive will take the step of resigning: “Another thing is difficult to explain”, they assumed.
With the “systematic harassment operation” against the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez, as the final straw that spilled the beans on the marriage. Until now, Sánchez himself bitterly criticized the ordeal they claimed his wife was suffering, whom they saw as helpless with the campaign of political destruction that, according to the socialists, is being orchestrated by the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. As the PP government began to promote ten years ago, at the time that Sánchez first assumed leadership of the PSOE, through the then commissioner José Manuel, according to new information revealed on Saturday by La Vanguardia.
Sánchez has prescribed resignation to his wife several times, after being the victim of nonsense such as claiming that he is actually a transsexual, or that he worked for a Moroccan drug-trafficking mafia. The President of the Government, throughout his turbulent political career, has ended up covered in a layer of reinforced concrete against the permanent attack of the right, and even from his own ranks, to bring him down. “He endures everything, but for his wife and daughters to attack him is beyond him”, they alleged in his closest circle. And the latest complaint by the pseudo-union ultra Manos Limpias against Begoña Gómez for the alleged crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business, which has caused the head of the court of inquiry number 41 of Madrid to open proceedings, was only the latest drop that has spilled a glass of patience already saturated.
After five days of absolute uncertainty, which Sánchez requested on Wednesday to “reflect and decide which path to take”, the Prime Minister plans to appear this morning to announce his final decision. In a climate of absolute uncertainty, in the Government, in the PSOE and in all political areas of Spain. And also in Catalonia, now in the middle of the electoral campaign for the meeting with the polls on May 12. “No news”, they continued to claim last night in Moncloa.
After the federal committee of the PSOE on Saturday, which launched a unanimous cry of support for Sánchez not to resign, amplified by the concentration of thousands of militants and sympathizers at the gates of Ferraz, yesterday there continued to be signs of adhesion between the dome and socialist militancy, and other progressive voices. Almost out of desperation, given the widespread impression that the head of the Executive already made the decision to resign last Wednesday.
“Sánchez is the fucking master”, encouraged the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, at the extraordinary congress of the PSdeG yesterday. The socialist leader wondered if Feijóo will not have in his hands “the papers of the espionage of the father-in-law of Pedro Sánchez from 2014” which was ordered by the PP government with Mariano Rajoy at the head, as revealed by this newspaper. “I find it hard to believe that the presidents of the PP don’t pass the papers to each other,” warned Puente. “Knowing Feijóo, I don’t believe that he has taken a step to the side with this issue. What’s more, I’m one of those who believe, firmly, and we’re waiting for an explanation from Feijóo, who today is behind the strategy of undermining Sánchez’s personal and family life because politically they can’t deal with him”, he denounced.
The leader of Més Madrid and Minister of Health, Mónica García, who assured that she has “intuitions” about Sánchez’s possible resignation, but refused to “speculate”, also transferred her support to the president. And she called to stand firm with the “political bullying” of the right against the progressive forces, which according to her is, in short, “a harassment of democracy”. “They will neither bend us nor, of course, tame us”, he warned.
