Yesterday, 40 former senior PSOE officials—including ex-ministers and former regional presidents—sent a letter demanding Pedro Sánchez’s resignation, citing the “democratic regression” Spain is experiencing. Beyond the corruption cases surrounding the Prime Minister and the PSOE, these long-serving socialists are extremely concerned about Spain’s trajectory. They demand a party regeneration that requires Sánchez’s departure, arguing he is a hostage to an incredible policy of pacts that conditions government action, and to his totalitarian impulse, which has been clearly demonstrated.
One of the letter’s signatories, Francisco Vázquez, clearly explained yesterday that no one is better positioned than them—with decades of party membership and no aspirations for new positions or elections—to draw attention to what is happening in Spain: the rupture of the constitutional order, with the colonization of institutions meant to act as government counterweights, and a worrying insistence on bending the judiciary to serve the executive.
Francisco “Paco” Vázquez, who served for years as the socialist mayor of A Coruña, effectively summarized the dilemma Pedro Sánchez poses to thousands of socialist militants and traditional PSOE voters. He is forcing them to choose between “the higher interests of Spain and the PSOE,” which, under Sánchez, leads the only European government supported by communists and separatist parties whose sole aim is to weaken the state and violate the Constitution—a Constitution “that people from the left, right, and center were able to give ourselves.”
Vázquez points out that it is crucial to understand what is at stake and to what extent Sánchez is willing to place all state powers at his service. This includes laws like the justice reform, with which he hopes to appoint over a thousand judges (and transfer the “procedural impetus” from judges to prosecutors—who are dependent on the government—while eliminating the figure of popular accusation, thereby aiming to quash the cases affecting his wife and brother).
“We need to understand that someone capable of falsifying ballot box results, as he did in that federal committee that ended in his removal, has no limits. And he’s capable of changing the president of the INE (National Institute of Statistics) whom he himself appointed, just so they can alter how GDP and employment are measured. Pedro Sánchez has made it clear that he wants no controls or counterbalances,” explains Vázquez.
“For example, people don’t know that since the Transition, it was customary for the Government to appoint the Governor of the Bank of Spain and the main opposition party to appoint the Deputy Governor. Well, Sánchez has appointed both the Governor—a former socialist minister who left the Social Security system with an annual deficit of €40 billion — and the Deputy Governor. Of the half-dozen board members the Bank has, only one was appointed by the opposition.”
“Let’s try to understand that we are talking about a Prime Minister who has 380 advisors, including screenwriters for films and series, and set design specialists…” And if at this point, you don’t feel a cold shiver down your spine… the problem is even more serious than it appears. (I’ve always told my wife that the only advantage I see in Sánchez is that if you wanted to, you could save on your Netflix subscription.)
