The trash compactor
They landed in a dark, damp, and debris-filled space: the trash compactor. Dirty water covered the floor, and the air smelled of rusty metal. Pieces of junk, broken circuits, organic remains... That's where the things forgotten by the Empire ended. And perhaps people too. With a dry, mechanical noise, one of the compartment's walls began to move inexorably. Then the other. The compactor was activating. The walls were beginning to close together. There was no way out. The room would become a metal tomb.
Perhaps some readers have also remembered this weekStar Wars and the trash compactor that threatens the protagonists, Chewbacca included. The fact is that the political situation in Madrid today is one of those movies in which the characters are trapped in a room with moving walls, inexorably threatening to crush them.
Until last Thursday, five judicial fronts directly or indirectly affected President Sánchez's entourage: three linked to suspicions of corruption, one to a family conflict of interest, and another to an institutional investigation related to the State Attorney General. The judicial and political storm was complex but seemed manageable until it came to light that Santos Cerdán, a man he completely trusted and secretary of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), had allegedly collected money from former minister Ábalos and the fixer Koldo García in exchange for the public works bid. If the investigation document of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard is already devastating, it has been complemented by Berlanga-esque audio recordings that leave little room for imagination or doubt. There's plenty of handouts, mutual distrust, construction companies thanking them for services rendered to facilitate public works contracts, a choice of sex for the weekend... A spectacle that is hardly compatible with Sánchez's regenerative rhetoric and with so many threads to pull that irregular party financing and the need to reopen the party cannot be ruled out. The audio recordings speak of multimillion-dollar commissions through a Venezuelan oil company mediated by businessman Víctor de Aldama. An offer made to Ábalos via Koldo in exchange for Sánchez's management of Juan Guaidó that would bring in half a million a month for three years. We recall that Ábalos met with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez at Barajas Airport and that the UCO (Union of the Supreme Court) maintained that the reason for the trip was the delivery of 104 gold bars, worth $68.5 million, negotiated with businessman Victor de Aldama.
The Socialists' big problem is that everything is in question today. Credibility has collapsed, and Pedro Sánchez has been left without the founding narrative of fighting corruption within the PP. The party is bewildered and demoralized, in the midst of a storm over the prosecution of the Attorney General and with a judicial calendar that will bring his brother to trial, just as a case is being brought against his wife, he is declaring his wife, and he is about to see his wife.
It's very difficult for Sánchez not to be swallowed up by the mud he had so often denounced. When he took to the podium in Congress in 2018 and promised to clean up the institutions tainted by the Gürtel scandal, the extra pay, and the complicit silence, the motion of censure against Rajoy wasn't just an arithmetic operation: it was a symbolic one. The PSOE presented itself as the guarantor of a new public ethic, and the Cerdán case is a direct blow to the heart of Sánchezism, because Santos Cerdán was the organic architect of power, the link between Ferraz and the Moncloa. The man in charge of delicate relationships, including with Carles Puigdemont.
The feeling of vertigo is palpable among the Socialists, and they will need collective political reflection that brings about real changes within a party with the resentful and emboldened Felipe González's old guard, and without a natural successor in Sánchez.
Meanwhile, the PP rubs its hands, but nothing more. Feijóo's impotence is that he cannot engage in dialogue with anyone other than Vox and, therefore, he doesn't dare present a motion of no confidence. A creative avenue could be a motion to hold elections, but that would require a capacity for dialogue. The PP is in a hurry to overthrow Sánchez because he continues to be dragged down by corrupt structures such as the Gürtel, Púnica, and Operation Kitchen cases, with firm convictions, a convicted party, and a dismissed prime minister. The judicial calendar indicates that the scandalous Kitchen case will go to trial in May 2026.
Since politics is a matter of arithmetic, Sánchez can only survive if he presents a motion of no confidence. If his members vote for it, he'll gain oxygen. If they don't, the Socialists will be able to agonizingly go to elections. If he does nothing, the walls will crush him, and they are getting closer all the time.
As for public opinion, when society ends up believing that "we are all equal," the danger is not only disaffection, but the populism it fuels. We'll see if anyone is able to stop the suffocation inside the trash compactor.