The last far-left government in Europe may be on its way out.
The last far-left government in Europe may be on its way out.
L ately, I haven’t been able to get the words of William F. Buckley Jr. out of my head: “The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.” Last Monday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced that the country’s general election would be brought forward to November 29. As a sociologist, I usually place limited value on casual observation, but I confess I haven’t seen such joy on the streets as I have this week in a long time. Sánchez has done something worse than govern poorly: He has managed to exasperate the Spanish people.
There is a common joke in Spain: If your mobile phone gets stolen in Madrid or Barcelona, you’re best off looking for it that same afternoon in a souk in Rabat. While he wasn’t physically pickpocketed, Pedro Sánchez himself had his phone infected with Pegasus spyware in 2021, likely an attack from Moroccan intelligence services. No one knows what is in those two-and-a-half gigabytes of data (it is unlikely to be treatises on apologetics), but all of Spain is convinced that ever since then, most of the strange decisions he has made have been conditioned by that espionage, including his historic shift in position on Western Sahara in Morocco’s favor and his silence toward Rabat following the migrant invasion of Ceuta this summer. Someday we will know if the mobile phone holds the key to this early election call.
In any case, the hard part is finding a reason not to call an early election. Today, Sánchez’s popularity among his own voters is low, but the hatred he stirs up among non-voters has reached unprecedented levels. His authoritarian exercise of power and his allergy to telling the truth (he calls it “changing his mind”) have turned him into meme fodder.
Sánchez’s socialist-communist government has been a disaster on all fronts: Spain suffered the worst pandemic management in the entire OECD, as confirmed by The Economist; Sánchez has hounded taxpayers with more than a hundred tax hikes since taking office in 2018, a period during which prices rose by more than 20 percent and the cost of the shopping basket surged by nearly 40 percent.
Furthermore, housing prices have risen by 50 percent over the last eight years. Hyper-regulation is a recipe for misery: Since 2018, Spain’s population has grown by 3.3 million due to mass immigration, yet new construction permits have barely exceeded 700,000 during that same period. The government has also wreaked havoc on the rental market with policies targeting landlords, such as eviction bans and price caps; you know you’ll be living at Mom and Dad’s place until you’re at least 50 the moment you hear a politician claim that the solution to the severe housing shortage is for the government to set the price.
Sánchez has proven disastrous even when faced with outside events, such as the floods in Valencia, when he tried to manipulate the disaster to blame the conservative regional government; the total blackout that left Spain in the dark for 15 hours following a reckless attempt to force green energy into the grid; or the train crash in Adamuz (Córdoba), which claimed 39 lives and exposed unprecedented infrastructure safety flaws due to a lack of maintenance. This occurred in the very same week that we learned that the minister in charge of infrastructure, who was later imprisoned, would pick prostitutes from a catalog one night and land them jobs at state-owned companies the next morning — like Pretty Woman, but with other people’s money.
It is often said that corruption does not influence elections in Spain, a fact that might seem surprising elsewhere. However, Sánchez’s case is unique: He is not merely an isolated “bad apple” in his government. His closest ministers and aides have gone to prison, while his wife and brother remain under investigation for corruption. This week, the Spanish newspaper El Debate revealed that government emissaries offered tax breaks to drug traffickers in exchange for assassinating the judge presiding over the case against Sánchez’s brother. With prostitutes, poverty, corruption, and crime, Sánchez has made it difficult at times to distinguish between Madrid and Havana.
Spain now has a historic opportunity to oust the only government in the West that includes communist ministers. However, for that change to happen, free and democratic elections are required. Sánchez’s repeated attempts to alter the electoral roll, via a law that would allow descendants of Spaniards living abroad to vote in Spain — a measure currently stalled by the Supreme Court — have kept the opposition on high alert to ensure a fair process.
Given the polls, which show the conservative PP and Vox holding a majority, it would take something very strange to prevent Sánchez from being ousted from La Moncloa next month. Yet strange things are already happening: Trade unions, for instance, silent for the past eight years, have just called a general strike protesting the prospect of a right-wing government.
The last time polls predicted a major electoral disaster for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), back in 2004, a mysterious group of Islamists blew up several trains in Madrid two days before the election. Socialists then staged massive protests across Spain, not against the terrorists but against the right-wing government, which they falsely accused of having dragged Spain into the invasion of Iraq. They pulled off an electoral upset. That is why there’s another recurring joke in Spain: Whenever Sánchez is in trouble, you should stock up on tons of toilet paper, candles, and non-perishable food, and avoid taking trains.
In short, Sánchez has not only ruined the Spanish economy, the business environment, entrepreneurship, legal certainty, public safety, and the prospect of buying or renting a home, but he has also eroded democratic coexistence, repeatedly interfered with the judiciary, and shattered public trust in institutions. Ousting Sánchez from La Moncloa is not merely a national priority; it is the only way for Spain to regain its status as a reliable partner, both within the EU and in its relations with the United States. Sánchez is a wretched figure who, through sheer lack of scruples, has held an entire great nation hostage for eight years, a nation now desperate to free itself from the yoke of communists and socialists and shine once more in freedom.