Pedro Sánchez's greatest victory

MADRID.— Should Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez resign? Bluntly: yes. Podemos has said it, but all the parties supporting the government, starting with the PSOE, know it: a president whose two closest collaborators of a decade are being investigated for belonging to a criminal organization (one of them has just been imprisoned), without forgetting that his wife, his brother, and the Attorney General are also being investigated for other crimes, lacks legitimacy to govern. On November 7, 2023, the Portuguese Socialist Prime Minister, António Costa, resigned his post as soon as it became known that two people close to him had been arrested; Costa, the current President of the European Council, justified his resignation thus: “The dignity of the duties of a prime minister is not compatible with any suspicion of integrity, good behavior, and even less so with any type of criminal act.” Regardless of the political consequences of Costa's decision, this is clear.

President Sánchez states that he will not resign because handing over the government to the right and the far right would be "tremendously irresponsible." This statement implies an acknowledgment that he is governing without the support of the social majority, which is disturbing: in a democracy, shouldn't those who have the support of the majority govern, whether we like it or not? Or do we prefer our own people to govern, even if they are in the minority? What is more important: the left or democracy? More than that: is a left that believes in democracy only occasionally and only if it benefits them still considered the left?

I don't think the left is morally superior to the right—that is the most poisonous idea circulating in the Spanish political market, especially for the left itself. I think the left is right, based on an irrefutable fact: decades of democratic socialism have engendered in northern Europe the most prosperous, free, and egalitarian societies in the world (if not in history). I am left-wing because I aspire to Spain being like the Norway of the south, with sun and tapas. But if the left ignores democracy (or if its commitment to it becomes evanescent or rhetorical), it ceases to be left-wing: democracy is the condition that makes the left possible; the radical nature of the left depends on the radical nature of its commitment to democracy.

That said, it's obvious that President Sánchez's argument contains two fallacies. The first is that his government is the antidote to the far right. This isn't the case: not because, as the polls suggest, the government's scandals are fueling the far right, but because the far right is already participating in the government. Those who don't know this don't want to know: JuntsxCat comes from a right-wing party that the Catalan independence process transformed into a far-right party (and making that party a key pillar of the government was the original mistake of the legislature, which rendered it almost unworkable from day one).

The second falsehood is that the PP and PSOE (and even Sumar) are incompatible parties, that they have completely opposing political projects and advocate antagonistic models of society. Judging by the apocalyptic brawls shaking Congress, this seems true; but it isn't: the proof is that, when governments change, nothing resembling regime changes or drastic alterations in fundamental policies occurs. The proof is that the PSOE and PP have been governing in coalition in Brussels for decades, where they jointly make around 70% of the decisions that affect us all (you read that right: around 70%).

Needless to say, if President Sánchez were to resign, there would be no need for him to call elections, as the PP and VOX intend; it would be enough for him to leave his place to another Socialist leader, someone capable of gaining the confidence of Congress, shaking up the government and the PSOE, pulling them out of the difficult situation into which corruption and abuse of power have plunged them, and allowing them to reach the 2027 elections in the best possible condition . Whatever the outcome of these elections, there would be many ways to prevent the far right from coming to power, not excluding the one preferred by the majority of Spaniards, again according to the polls: not necessarily a German-style grand coalition government, but rather a conditional, variable, and temporary understanding between the PSOE and the PP, which would not change the basic direction of economic and social policy—a policy that has yielded good results, although it is not as progressive as the government proclaims or as some of us would like—and which would once and for all undertake the major reforms that the country needs and which can only be carried out through broad agreements between the two main parties, starting with a reform that reduces corruption to the irrelevant (whoever says this is a pipe dream is lying: the best democracies have achieved it; the key is not to replace the bad with the good, as the preachers of the moral superiority of the left believe or pretend to believe: the key is to change the system to prevent even the good from becoming bad).

There are many other options, as I said, but it seems clear to me that, right now, none of them include the president remaining in La Moncloa. On the contrary, it's clear that the longer he delays resigning, the worse it will be for the left, the better for the far right, and the worse for everyone: with the entire country on tenterhooks, waiting to see who will be the next corrupt person to appear in the corrupt's audio recordings, the national and international discredit of the president, of the Spanish left, and of Spanish democracy increases daily. This is all it takes: for the good of his party, of the left, and of democracy, the president for whom many of us voted should resign.

Will he resign? The only thing we've known for sure about power since Homer is that sooner or later it clouds the understanding of those who wield it, preventing them from seeing the obvious (we also know that it's very difficult for those around him to tell him the truth: power breeds flatterers); the ring in The Lord of the Rings , that object that unsettles its possessor, is an all-too-obvious metaphor for an unassailable truth. Furthermore, the president's acolytes, incense-bearers, and associates will do everything they can to prevent him from resigning, because their prosperity depends on it. So everything suggests he won't resign and that we citizens are in for agonizing months, during which the president, his party, and his government will discredit themselves even more than they already are, which means it will take them much longer to recover from their discredit (and that the far right will inch ever closer to power).

The outlook is bleak. Some claim that the president will remain in La Moncloa at all costs because, fearing his name will appear in the corrupt officials' audio recordings, he needs all the tools the presidency provides to protect himself. I refuse to believe it: that would mean he has completely stopped thinking about his country and is now thinking only about himself. It would be the worst way to prove his worst enemies right; handing over the reins to someone who could take over, on the other hand, would be the best way to take them away, showing everyone that, regardless of the mistakes he may have made, he always sought the best for his country. It would also be the best way to vindicate himself, as a politician and as a person. Or perhaps, at this point, the only way he has left. His apparent defeat would be his greatest victory.

(C) EL PAIS YSL

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