Yesterday morning, a judge opened an investigation into the shady business dealings of Begoña Gómez, the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which we have already reported on in The Corner: “Something fishy in La Moncloa: Pedro Sánchez’s wife recommended two companies in a public tender for a €7-million contract”
And in the afternoon, in a letter posted on his social networks, the president of the government announced that he was “deeply in love with his wife” and that he would take five days of reflection to decide whether it was worth continuing in the face of the harassment from the right that has brought the case to court. Monday will tell us.
The surprise has been huge, in Spain and abroad, but no one is under any illusions: the Prime Minister is the author of a book whose title makes his character clear: “Manual de resistencia” (Resistance Manual). And he has been able to buy with an ad hoc amnesty the seven votes of the fugitive Puigdemont to stay in the Government, crossing all the red lines that he himself had set… So no one believes that he will finally resign on Monday. Hence the headlines on the front pages of the Spanish press today:
El Mundo: A weak president throws down a sentimental challenge to society
ABC: Sánchez manipulates the country
La Razón: Victimism and calculated half-truths. The spectacle only encourages and increases suspicions of irregularities in his wife’s consultancy business.
El Periódico: In any case, irresponsibility. This is not the time to add more instability, whatever the reason behind Sánchez’s deferred resignation.
El Correo: Victimistic retreat. Whatever Sánchez’s decision, the legislature will be even more unstable after a partisan acrimony to which he is no stranger.
El Español: Sánchez irresponsibly overreacts to an inconsequential judicial act. Pedro Sánchez’s vaudeville-letter: between blackmail and polarisation.
Libertad Digital: The Begoña Gómez case and cynicism a la carte.
El Confidencial: The childish throwing down of the gauntlet of the narcissist. Sánchez threatens to leave in order to stay, taking to the extreme an exercise of victimhood with which he intends to agglutinate the plebiscitary fervour of his supporters.
Of course, the government newspaper El País takes a different approach: El límite de Sánchez. The president of the government is considering resigning because of the harassment of his wife by the right wing, which has managed to bring the case to court.
