Forty days later, Pedro Sánchez has sent us a new letter via the X network telling us how he is, the problems he has, that he is stronger and more convinced than ever and that the judge who is investigating his wife and who has summoned her to testify on July 5th at 10am for alleged crimes of influence peddling and corruption in the private sector must have some interest in distorting the result of next Sunday's European elections. We can already say it: in this era of short and direct messages, Sánchez has initiated the recovery of the genre of letter-writing as a deadly electoral weapon. He used it for the first time on April 25th, at the start of the Catalan electoral campaign, when he told us that he was very much in love, that his wife was undergoing legal persecution and that he was retiring for five days to reflect on whether it was worthwhile continuing in the position of Spanish prime minister.
That resignation hoax, which caused significant emotional impact in the Catalan electorate, was an innovative and important move on the Catalan political chessboard. For five days, someone who was not a candidate made the entire campaign revolve around himself, mobilized blocks of dormant voters on the metropolitan peripheries of Barcelona and Tarragona who were scarcely motivated to take part in a Catalan election and brought his supporters to the polls as if it was, in part, a Spanish election. It was brilliant and successful, and we will never know how many of the 42 Catalan Socialist (PSC) deputies were obtained due to his over-acting. Now, five days before the European elections, he repeats the move and counters the court summons with a new narrative, another letter, with which, at the very least, he evens up the debate: what is more important, the court summons that Begoña Gómez has received or the persecution by the right and far right that Sánchez tells us about? Will this second letter have the same importance and consequences, and lead to the same mobilization of his voters, as the first one did?
Pedro Sánchez has turned his wife's judicial situation into a public melodrama, forgetting that he presides over the fifth largest economy in the European Union by volume of GDP, the fifteenth largest at world scale
But this is not the only issue. Pedro Sánchez has every right to defend himself. That goes without saying. And to defend his wife and his family if he feels attacked, mistreated or unfairly harassed. He has no more right than any ordinary person, but no less either. Yet it is a very different thing to turn his wife's legal situation into a public melodrama, with shades of a Latin American soap opera, forgetting that he presides over the fifth largest economy in the European Union by volume of GDP, and the fifteenth largest in the world. That on its own creates an obligation: to keep us well away from making idiots of ourselves. It's true that politics has never been such a spectacle as it is now, from those on one side and on the other. And that what was once extravagant is now part of everyday public life.
Sánchez says in his letter: "Begoña and I know why they are attacking her. Neither of us are naive. They are doing it because she is my partner. She is a hard-working and honest woman who stands up for her right to work without giving that up because of her husband's responsibilities. A right that I defend in my family life and for which I work as prime minister of Spain, to ensure that men and women have the same opportunities and the same rights." And he warns of what we will see published in the coming days: "All lies. A falsehood. Just one more. As for me, I have no doubt that they will not break me." This time, the five days of reflection on his future will not be necessary. By the way, at the end he tells us that he will see his four-year legislature through to the end, which will be his first. We'll see if it's true.