The FT's Obsession with Pedro Sánchez and the Myth of a Hopeless Spain

The Financial Times’s coverage of Pedro Sánchez has never been positive or even fair, and its report on his appearance at the recent NATO summit is no exception. Sánchez refused to endorse Donald Trump’s demand that all NATO members commit five percent of their budgets to defence.

The clash in The Hague came as Sánchez was weakened at home by a swirl of corruption scandals, which include his wife and brother as well as two former right-hand men accused of taking kickbacks on public contracts. All deny wrongdoing.

This sentence flattens key distinctions. Lumping together the serious accusations against José Luis Ábalos and Santos Cerdán, two key former PSOE figures, with those against Sánchez’s wife and brother is wrong. The latter are targets of judicial persecution. Their only real crime is their relationship with the Prime Minister. One of the judges responsible for the charges against Sánchez’s brother has even appeared at a Vox protest calling for the Prime Minister to resign.

The sense of crisis, including mounting calls from his critics for a general election, led to suggestions that Sánchez wanted to use the summit to change the subject.

This makes it sound as if calls for Sánchez to resign are something new. They are not. The opposition and large parts of the media have never accepted the legitimacy of his governments since he first took office seven years ago. The same critics have been demanding early elections since day one. Others calling for his departure include party dinosaurs trapped in the 1980s, supporters of Eduardo Madina who still resent Sánchez for beating him to the PSOE leadership in 2014, and bishops who would like nothing more than to see the back of a secular progressive in la Moncloa.

Sánchez is not only at odds with the Trump administration on defence. He has tested its patience by slamming Israel’s assault on Gaza, attacking the Silicon Valley ‘techno-caste,’ and courting President Xi Jinping in China. He is also an advocate of immigration.

The FT’s pearls are not so much being clutched here as ground to dust as it contemplates an EU leader unwilling to even pretend to toe Trump’s line. One who sharply criticises the Israeli government, and shows skepticism toward big tech monopolies. How awful! And even worse, “He is also an advocate of immigration” The horror! The horror!

So what is Sánchez actually doing?

What he has always done; reading the political landscape and acting on the broad impulses of progressive opinion in Spain. Had he agreed to Trump’s five percent defence demand, he would have alienated both his coalition partners and many in his own party. There are clear reasons why no Spanish government is going to significantly increase defence spending. The political cost would be immense, and the only likely beneficiaries would be the pro-Kremlin far right.

The FT is not alone in painting Spain as particularly corrupt and dysfunctional. Spanish voices contribute to the same narrative. Writing about the recent corruption cases in The Guardian, María Ramírez offered this bleak diagnosis,

Part of the answer lies in the lack of strong rules and independent oversight to hold politicians and other public officials accountable. Parliamentary checks are weak, transparency standards are low and the sanctions against companies complicit in corruption are insufficient. Oversight bodies are frequently toothless or politicised, and ethical codes are either vague or unenforced. This vacuum creates fertile ground for impunity.

There is truth here. But how does Spain compare to other European democracies? Ramírez argues that it has been slow to take up the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption recommendations. But how does it match up to France, Italy, or the United Kingdom on this? Without some attempt at comparative analysis, such descriptions serve more to confirm stereotypes than to inform. They reinforce the familiar image of Spain as a lazy, corrupt Mediterranean backwater, an image that finds an eager audience in Britain and among Spanish elites who enjoy performing national self-loathing in English.

The investigations into Ábalos and Cerdán included round-the-clock surveillance, and vehicle tracking. One can only imagine what similar investigative zeal might turn up if applied to Covid-era procurement contracts in the UK.

Rodrigo Rato, former Economy Minister, former Deputy Prime Minister, former head of the IMF, is currently serving a prison sentence for corruption. He is not alone. Multiple senior figures from the conservative Partido Popular, especially in Madrid, have been convicted and jailed in recent years.

Can you imagine anything similar happening in Britain? Obviously not.

The FT’s coverage fits neatly into a broader story that both British and Spanish media like to tell: that Spain is fundamentally broken. The FT blames reckless leadership. The Guardian blames weak institutions. What neither reckons with is that Spain’s democratic system, flawed though it may be, is in some ways working better than those of the country doing the finger-pointing. Corruption is prosecuted, usually. A progressive government is holding its ground, just about. And Pedro Sánchez, to the dismay of many, is still standing.