Sánchez and Spain, in their labyrinth

There are political crises that define generations. And then there are those that portray states. The Cerdán case (and, by extension, what Pedro Sánchez drags down with it) seems to want to fit into this second category. Not as just another scandal, but as a symptom. As confirmation. As the visible vertex of a recurring pathology: that of a state that, time and again, cracks at its institutional seams. Spain as a failed state not due to technical incapacity, but due to moral exhaustion.

Because this crisis, on the surface, seems like just another political-media storm in the journey of Sánchezism. But when one observes the pattern, the institutional déjà vu is too eloquent to ignore. Felipe González fell not only because of the GAL (Spanish Workers' Party), but because of what they symbolized: the confusion between State and apparatus. Aznar was ostracized not because of the Iraq War, but because of lying about 11-M, revealing the powerhouse's fear of letting the people know. Zapatero fell not because of the economic crisis itself, but because of denying it and playing the Wizard of Oz with the markets. Rajoy was devoured by the Bárcenas papers, the parallel PP (Party of the People's Party) that (theoretically) grew in the shadow of the official party. And now, will Sánchez fall because of Cerdán?

Does having "the worst opposition" justify it all? Are you resisting just to stay alive?

Not because of Cerdán himself. What's at stake isn't a secondary figure, but the narrative of regeneration that Sánchez has sought (and still seeks) to embody. If the PSOE was supposed to be the bulwark against the sewers of the past, what is it doing now, caught between conversations, untimely dismissals, and increasingly uncomfortable silences?

Read also

The president returned from his "retirement" saying that politics needed to be dignified. His mistake (tragic in the classic sense of the term) was confusing power with virtue. And that makes him a hostage to his own promises, his own gestures, his own labyrinth. Because, if there's a mythological figure that embodies his current moment, it's Theseus, who entered the labyrinth confidently, guided by a thread he believed to be secure, ready to defeat the same old monster. But that thread (that of narrative, that of legitimacy, that of resistance) seems to have become tangled. And the minotaur this time is none other than his own political fragility.

Meanwhile, there are those (with their eyes wide open) who detect an opportunity. Junts, for example, sees in this confusion an ideal context to tighten the ropes and gain political space for Catalonia. Not so much because the state is now willing to give in, but perhaps because it's too busy saving itself to resist certain pushes. We'll see if Carles Puigdemont's men know how to do it, or if Sánchez will at least continue to resist this as he did in his best days.

In the end, is it worth resisting when you no longer remember why you started? Does it all justify having "the worst opposition"? Because if you resist just for the sake of it, the exercise ceases to be political and becomes mechanical. And in politics, as in myths, sometimes we fall not for lack of strength, but for forgetting the meaning of the path.