Harvard students corner Sánchez with questions about corruption, his family and Pegasus

BarcelonaPedro Sánchez's plan to establish himself as one of the beacons of global progressivism during his trip to the United States –during which he confronted Donald Trump and teamed up with New York assemblyman Zohran Mamdani– stumbled at Harvard. The Spanish Prime Minister gave a lecture this morning (Catalan time) on the need to act against tech-oligarchs, but the students who attended wanted to corner him with questions about the PSOE's judicial cases and its inner circle, the Pegasus scandal, or his government's position regarding Western Sahara and Venezuela.

The relaxed tone of the head of the executive, who urged not to believe "at all" ("no freaking way", he said in English) the owners of social networks and large artificial intelligence platforms, did not find all the complicity he was looking for among the students of the prestigious University of Massachusetts. After some questions on the subject, he had to face others about uncomfortable topics that, until now, he had not had to address in his official agenda in the United States, marked by the UN General Assembly.

When questioned about the cases involving his wife, Begoña Gómez, and his brother, David Sánchez, the Prime Minister claimed that "these are not cases of corruption or scandals." "The opposition and some far-right associations have crossed certain red lines that lead me to reflect," he said, as reported by the Efe agency. And he limited these cases to "personal attacks" against him. "And it is much more difficult because a young student like you already condemns them, because you say that my brother and my wife are guilty, and that is not fair because they are not," he told one of his interlocutors.

In the midst of the crisis in Ceuta, another student questioned him about the espionage of his mobile phone—and those of several ministers—with the Pegasus program, regarding theories suggesting that Morocco was behind it, and the relationship of the scandal to Spain's change of position on Western Sahara. Sánchez recalled that the authorship of the espionage could not be proven and regretted having to defend himself against fake news. He also claimed the independence of his political decisions regarding other countries and, regarding the position on the Sahara, he limited himself to saying that he defends the UN resolution for there to be an autonomous region within Morocco and the commitment to humanitarian aid for the Sahrawi people.

Likewise on the international front, but again in relation to the cases involving the PSOE, another of the questions that Sánchez received concerned the position of his government regarding Venezuela and that country's ties with former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is being investigated in the Plus Ultra case. Faced with this, he assured that Spain did not recognize the electoral results of Nicolás Maduro and that it always advocates for free elections, and he stressed that the future of Venezuela must be decided by the Venezuelans.