Crisis, What Crisis?

The sound and the fury in Spain

There are two types of political crisis. One is objective: a coalition partner abandons you and sides with the opposition, a no confidence motion is tabled, maladroit budget decisions drive multitudes of citizens to the streets demanding fresh elections, that sort of thing.

The other is harder to describe but easy to perceive. It can be created by opposition parties if they have enough friends in the judiciary and media. It consists of the manufacture of a sense of inevitable doom for the government, a widespread feeling that regardless of the facts, this cannot go on, the government will have to go.

And how is it done? By blasting it day in day out with cataclysmic allegations that re-echo on and on in the media and gradually become established as facts in voters’ minds. And not only in voters’ minds, but in the minds of quite a few on the government’s own side as well.

The latter kind of crisis is the one that Pedro Sánchez’s government is currently enduring. Indeed it is the same one that all his governments have endured since he first came to power in 2018; this iteration is simply much more intense than previous ones.

Hang on, so you’re dismissing all the corruption allegations?

Not at all. Some of them are likely very serious, but nothing has been proved against anyone yet, and those against Sánchez’s family are pure persecution.

The current accusation are only secondarily intended to culminate in convictions, their primary purpose is create an atmosphere of permanent moral pollution.

The curious thing about the current crisis is that none of the constitutional mechanisms associated with an actual governmental collapse are occurring. Congress still functions, the governing coalition remains intact, there is no no confidence majority, and the streets are not full of pitchfork-wielding citizens.

It exists primarily in newspaper headlines, judicial leaks, breaking news flashes on radio and TV, social media and political WhatsApp groups.

Sánchez is simultaneously portrayed as a tyrant controlling every institution and as a weak puppet incapable of governing. The contradiction rarely troubles his opponents because the objective is not coherence but exhaustion.

It is also notable that the current wave of allegations was released and colourful police raids began to occur after the PP’s failure to win an overall majority in the Andalusian regional elections and with the Caso Kitchen trial underway in Madrid.

It concerns an alleged covert police operation run in 2013 under Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz during the Rajoy government. Prosecutors allege the operation was launched to retrieve compromising documents from the PP’s former treasurer Luis Bárcenas, who had already implicated the party in the wider Gürtel corruption scandal, and to prevent that material from reaching anti-corruption authorities.

The alleged instrument was the disgraced former police commissioner José Villarejo, and Fernández Díaz and his former deputy Francisco Martínez each face requests for fifteen years in prison. In short, the PP stands accused of having used the organs of the state not to investigate corruption within its own ranks, but to bury the evidence of it.

So, instead of talking about the PP’s failure in the south and its corruption of the national police’s senior officers, we are talking about allegations made against the present government and people close to it.

The pressure on Sánchez is building by the day. But what is the pressure? Essentially it is an atmosphere: a cloud of insinuation, leaks, raids, headlines and permanent emergency that the opposition believes will either crack Sánchez’s will to continue governing until the next election, or force one of the small parties supporting his government in Congress to desert him and back a no confidence motion.

But there is no sign of either of those things happening. Sánchez yesterday cheerfully trolled the nervous nellies and opportunists on his own side calling for early elections. Perhaps, as Guillem Martínez suggested yesterday, his true gift as a politician is an unusually high tolerance for this kind of crisis. Whatever he feels inside, he is giving not the slightest impression that he intends to call early elections.

And while the PNV (conservative Basque nationalists) have called for an election date to be set for this year, they are not going to support a no confidence vote and usher in a PP/Vox government that would subject them to the same treatment that Sánchez’s government has suffered for the last eight years, and probably worse.

But why hang on when it’s so difficult to pass laws and in this atmosphere?

I see the crisis is getting to you too. A government that retains parliamentary confidence is not “hanging on”. It is governing. There is no majority to support a no confidence motion, so it is as legitimate as any government in any democratic country. And every day it remains in power is a day without a PP/Vox government in power, and I am fine with that.

My guess is that Sánchez’s strategy is to do nothing until the World Cup starts in a couple of weeks. That will take a lot of the heat out of the crisis atmosphere, and after that come the summer holidays. He can call an election in the autumn if he feels like it, or not.

Two possible events may undo this strategy. One is an early World Cup exit for Spain. The other is that some judge might place Sánchez himself under investigation. But there is nothing he can do about either, and in the latter case, would the Catalans, the Basques and the small left parties vote to strip him of parliamentary immunity?

I doubt it, because they would effectively be declaring open season on themselves under the next government.

The deeper problem for Sánchez’s opponents is that they cannot accept a political reality in which governments they dislike are still legitimate governments. So the country remains trapped in a permanent atmosphere of exceptionalism, where every progressive coalition is treated not as a rival administration but as an occupation to be resisted until removed. And that’s a big problem for Spain.

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