2023-07-19 09:08:02
BARCELONA (AP) — Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been dismissed prematurely more than once in his relatively short but busy political career.
Battered and bruised following the major setback for his Socialist Party in municipal and regional elections in May, Sánchez wasted no time licking his wounds. The day following the fateful election day, he surprised his rivals by advancing the general elections, which were expected at the end of the year, to this Sunday, in the middle of summer.
Translated from politics to the street, it’s like saying: Let’s settle this once and for all.
Most of the polls indicate that the Popular Party, the conservative formation led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will be the most voted and would be in a position to form a government coalition with the far-right Vox party. If that happens, Spain would join Europe’s drift to the right and call into question the two main pillars of Sánchez’s left-wing government: the European Union-backed renewable energy revolution and an ambitious rights agenda. women and the LGBTQ community.
Núñez Feijóo and other critics tend to describe Sánchez as unreliable and point out that he is willing to do anything to stay in power, but no one accuses him of cowering when it comes to fighting.
A native of Madrid, a former basketball player and economics professor, Sánchez, 51, has shown that he can achieve the unexpected. After mounting a grassroots insurgency to resume the post of party general secretary in 2017, a year later he led the first successful vote of no confidence in Spain with which he overthrew his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy, and gave him the post of president. of the government.
To stay in power, Sánchez had to partner with a far-left, anti-establishment party in 2019 in the first coalition in nearly half a century of democracy. Now, he will have to achieve another victory once morest the odds.
Without being a motivational speaker or much of a debater, he is considered by many to be out of touch with reality.
“His great virtue is his sense of timing. What is quite disconcerting is how hard it is for him to capitalize on it (among voters),” political analyst Josep Ramoneda, a veteran observer of the Spanish left, told The Associated Press.
“What makes people not have confidence in him? Sure there are many factors and it is very complicated. It is true that it has a somewhat elitist tone. If I may use the expression, perhaps he is too handsome to be president of the government (…) When he walks out, he has a somewhat haughty tone, ”added Ramoneda.
“And there is something else: it is difficult for him to have the authority that other leaders who have remained in government for a long, long, long time have had,” he added.
Sánchez, however, has always been strong in formulating policies, negotiating agreements and making difficult decisions.
He has been a hyperactive lawmaker despite leading a minority coalition government.
One of his first measures as president of the government was the removal, highly symbolic, of the corpse of the dictator Francisco Franco from a public mausoleum. Sánchez established her feminist credentials with governments in which there was a majority of women, who held vice presidencies and ministries such as Economy, Environment and Energy, and Labor.
Fluent in English, Sánchez raised the profile of Spain in Brussels, where he is a staunch supporter of the European Union and an ally of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who belongs to the conservative group.
He responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by ordering one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, an aggressive aid package to help people maintain jobs and a campaign that made the country the world leader in vaccination rates.
On the economic front, he approved large budgets and important labor and pension reforms, and convinced Brussels to allow Spain and Portugal some flexibility to limit the price of energy and curb inflation. He lobbied for Spain to get 140 billion euros in direct transfers and loans from EU pandemic recovery funds, earmarking much of it for clean energy sources. The Spanish economy is growing and creating jobs despite the turmoil caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The seeds of his current problems were planted when Sánchez won back-to-back elections in 2019 but needed to form a government with the far-left United We Can party. During that campaign he had said that he “would not sleep peacefully” if he handed over important positions in his executive to members of Unidas Podemos. Four years later, a sexual consent law promoted by his Minister of Equality, from Podemos, inadvertently reduced prison sentences hundreds of sex offenders in his government’s biggest mistake.
What his followers consider to be one of his greatest successes has also been used once morest him. Having inherited a troubled Catalonia following its failed 2017 bid for independence, Sánchez reduced tensions in the region by engaging with separatists and pardoning nine of their imprisoned leaders. Later, he revised the laws on sedition and embezzlement of public funds in a clear nod to secessionists in legal trouble.
The Popular Party and many undecided voters say he calmed separatists in Catalonia and the Basque Country to gain their support in the Lower House.
Sánchez’s chances in the general elections depend on a solid turnout from the Socialists — who have risen in Catalonia while falling in the rest of Spain — the reformed far-left Sumar coalition and a handful of smaller parties.
He has already overcome some difficult situations. As prime minister, he overcame two no-confidence motions and a vote on a crucial labor law.
Nothing, however, tops his resurgence following being sacked as general secretary of the Socialists in 2016. Sánchez launched what many considered a quixotic campaign to win the support of the party’s rank-and-file throughout Spain. It worked and he won the primaries to return to power.
Asking time and time once more during the current campaign what he will do if he has to leave Moncloa, Sánchez has always responded the same: “I am going to win. I am convinced that I am going to win”.
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