PSOE crosses succession of corruption cases involving the Prime Minister’s government, party and family. The traditional right of Feijóo has organized the protest and already asks for new elections, but also to accounts with scandals and suspicions, may even be the far right (from the political family of the arrival) of Vox and ABASCAL, not the PP, to benefit from a trip to the polls
Spain Square, in downtown Madrid, at the end of Gran Vía, one of the city’s main avenues, was taken this Sunday by a crowd that required early elections and the end of the government led by Pedro Sánchez. Between posters that called “traitor” to the Prime Minister and appeals to the resignation of the executive, the environment was more than contestation-it was of rupture.
The mobilization, convened by the conservative Popular Party (PP) under the motto “Mafia or Democracy”, will have gathered between 45,000 and 50,000 people, according to data from the central government delegation in the region. Organizers, in turn, speak of over 100,000.
The backdrop is dense and persistent: over the last year, the Spanish Socialist Socialist Party (PSOE), the Executive and even Sánchez’s family core have been the subject of successive suspicions of corruption – in a spiral that opposition explores and now seems to have found echo in the streets.
In recent days, the pressure has ademed. Leire Díaz, a former PSOEmiller, was caught in recordings where he allegedly offered legal favors in exchange for compromising information about the High Guardia Civil staff-the same unit investigating the wife’s wife Begoña Gómez, brother, David Sánchez, and former Transport Minister José Luis Abalas. Díaz fired and denied acting on behalf of the party or Sánchez, claiming to be just doing research for a book on corruption.
“We want to vote, because no one voted for it”
In the boiling square, at noon,: “Spain needs a revolution of decency and freedom-and we will be led it on the streets and the ballot box,” he said in an inflamed speech. “Sánchez, stop hiding, lying and running away. Spain already knows who it is and what you did. Submit to democracy. Call elections: we want to vote, because no one voted for it-not even yours.”
Sánchez, in turn, has accused political and media opponents of conducting a “harassment and demolition operation” against themselves and the woman. It claims that the accusations are unfounded and have one purpose: provoking their personal and political collapse.
The investigation to Begoña Gómez was born from a complaint from the Association Clean hands (Clean Hands), a group with links to the far right and history of resorting to the courts to reach political targets. They accuse her of using her position as a wife of the prime minister to get sponsorship for a coordinating university master’s degree. Sánchez classified the process as a “grotesque staging”, orchestrated by “radical forces.”
David Sánchez, the brother, also faces a lawsuit for alleged trafficking in influence, also originated in complaints of Clean hands and other entities. David denies all accusations.
Old Minister Abalas-once ally close to the prime minister-saw his name dragged to mud when last year he learned that his advisor had been detained on suspicion of receiving payments to facilitate masks contracts during the pandemic.
But not even the PP, which now calls for a “revolution”, escapes unharmed to the tide of suspicion. The party, which has lost power for seven years precisely due to corruption scandals, is again under scrutiny. One of the focuses is the management of deadly floods in Valencia, the governor. Another is the performance during the first months of the pandemic in elderly homes in the Madrid community, where more than 7,200 people died.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Madrid’s regional president and one of the most aggressive voices against Sánchez, continues to be questioned about the protocols in a row in the homes and saw his private life cross the public debate. The partner, Alberto González Amador, is being investigated for several crimes – including two accusations of fiscal fraud and one of documentary falsification related to committees received in a company that imported masks. Ayuso claims that he is being the subject of a persecution moved by “all state powers” just because he is his partner. A member of his government recently recalled that “the presumption of innocence must be respected.”
On the executive side, the strategy seems to be to devalue the protest. Transport Minister Oscar Puente shared aerial images of the square to show that he would not be full. Oscar López, Minister of Digital Transformation, accused the PP of orchestrating a demonstration to hide Feijó’s poor performance and Ayuso’s judicial problems.
“They are really nervous,” López wrote on Rede X. “They filled the Spanish Square with insults, but not with people. While they throw mud, we move on.”
Far right waiting for the defeated
It is in the noise of the square and in the cracks of the system that Vox (from the political family of the arrival) blooms. When the center is entangled in cases, suspicion, scandals-and the traditional right is busier to clean the shrapnel than propose it-the far right observes, grows, waits. An electoral anticipation in Spain at this time would have more than one defeated. But perhaps just a true winner.
Vox, a party that began to be a dissonant note in Parliament and today presents itself as a baton of the order and “Spain Una”, could be the biggest beneficiary of a return to the polls. It feeds on the wear of the PSOE, the fragmentation of the PP and the anger that spreads-on the streets, on the nets, in the conversations of bar where one no longer speaks of left and right, but of “them” and “we”.
For part of the electorate, Sánchez is no longer just a politician – he is a symbol to slaughter. For another, Feijóo no longer represents alternative – it is an echo spent. Between the two, Vox emerges as a war cry, a simple solution for embarrassingly complex times.
And if there is something that the party of Santiago Abascal knows how to do, it is capitalizing chaos. This is why, in an early election scenario, who can earn is not the one who rules or protests. It is the one who awaits – closed fist, sharp speech, raised flag – for the collapse of both.
But Santiago ABASCAL no longer wants protests; . Anticipating this Sunday’s demonstration in Madrid, the Vox leader dropped the institutional varnish and pushed the Popular Party into the abyss of total break. According to ABASCAL, it is no longer enough just to criticize Pedro Sánchez or summon multitudes: you need to sabotage the agreements that the PP has with the PSOE, waging nominations in the Constitutional Court, cutting bricks into Brussels and undermining the system until the government falls. What ABASCAL proposes is a prolonged siege of democracy as it exists until it gives in to the weight of its own paralysis.
In an inflamed discourse, the far right leader appealed to widespread political disobedience: that institutions are emptied, to be legitimacy to an elected executive who lifts a country against his Prime Minister. It’s not just a criticism, it’s a total wear strategy.
For ABASCAL, the more chaotic (or as he says, “ingbernable”) is Spain of Sánchez, the more urgent it becomes its own rise. And the more hesitating Feijóo, the more Vox feeds on the idea that only hardness serves. It is not a matter of governor-it is now about preventing someone else to do.
