1. In the month of June, Diego Fuoli, the Sabadell goalkeeper, in the middle of the celebration for having been promoted to the second division of Spanish football, took the microphone from the balcony of the City Hall and encouraged the crowd in front of him: "Voy a soltar aquí una expresión y vosotros contestaís lo que os salga: «Pedro Sánchez...» ". And yes, many people knew the answer, and they joined in, because the chant has been circulating for some time. The neighborhood association denounced the Aragonese goalkeeper for a hate crime, the justice system archived it, the footballer apologized and today Fuoli continues to be the starting goalkeeper at Sabadell.
2. In the month of July, a lot of people gathered in a bar behind the Sant Cugat monastery to watch the World Cup final on a generous screen in terms of inches, bigger than the one we all have at home. Spain won the final against Argentina and, instead of chanting the name of Ferran Torres, the cry that triumphed most at the street party was the same: "Pedro Sánchez, hijo de puta". What did the Prime Minister have to do with the euphoria of the victory? For lack of an answer, I began to sense the relationship between the flood of Spanish flags and the cry of the summer. The more flags, the longer the little song lasts.
3. A third example, minor but significant. At the beginning of August, in a nightclub in that inhospitable stretch between Calella and Llafranc that not even Josep Pla would recognize, a group of friends went to have a good time. There were –they say– more local youth than tourists. At closing time, before turning on the lights, instead of playing the last song, a chant was intoned that became the –alcoholic– ritual of every night in August. "Pedro Sánchez, hijo de puta". The Empordà, 2026. An unexpected reality.
4. And, of course, the decentralized demonstrations in favor of the people of Ceuta arrived this week and both in the autonomous city itself, as in Madrid, as in Badalona –with a García Albiol puffed up like a raisin rooster on his balcony–, the cry is always the same. The little song of the insult. From the Tarragona demonstration, the image of a very young boy has gone viral who not only sings the same thing, under the proud gaze of his mother, but has made a banner, very colorful and with childish calligraphy, where exactly the same slogan is written. Very edifying. They already told us that in Catalonia we indoctrinated children.
5. The starting signal for this devastating campaign, with such undemocratic tics, was initiated by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in an involuntary way, at Congress. On November 15, 2023, during the inauguration of the president himself, when Pedro Sánchez made reference to the corruption cases of Díaz Ayuso's brother, the television cameras caught her, in the guest gallery, saying "Qué hijo de puta". The next day, to fix it, she used irony to justify herself: "Sí, lo dije. Me gusta la fruta". There is the starting signal of the campaign. The success has been as cheap as it was massive.
6. And, despite everything, Sánchez holds on. The wear and tear due to the corruption of Ábalos, the Cerdán case, the Leire mess, the jewels of Zapatero and the shenanigans of his wife and brother, he has been enduring with many scratches. Ceuta, however, seems to be the point of no return. His government has displayed the entire repertoire of ineptitude in this month of a crisis, whether prepared by Morocco or not. They did not find out about anything, they did not know how to react, they were uncoordinated, they allowed the situation to fester, they neglected the people of Ceuta, they did not provide the basic essentials to the immigrants and they swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the great trap of a far-right that is already rubbing its hands. Pedro Sánchez, however, will not be removed by the song of this scratched record but by the ballot boxes, by democracy and by his own incompetence. The Ceuta case was not easy, but it was difficult to do it worse.
