Pedro Sánchez still believes there is a game

MadridPedro Sánchez had a roadmap before the massive arrival of migrants in Ceuta: to confront everything related to the international far-right, to present the most social budget in the history of Spain, and to establish himself as the last bastion of European and global progressivism. The massive arrival of migrants on July 30th has stranded him in an unprecedented crisis that threatens to be the final blow to Sanchismo, but, even so, and at this point, those at the Moncloa believe that there is only one way forward: to hold on and try to recover. For this reason, his inner circle maintains that he wants to exhaust the legislature until 2027. With the doubt of whether he will call for elections before or after the municipal and regional ones.

This week's polls are devastating for the left because in all the surveys –with the permission of the CIS which will be published this Monday– they give the PP and Vox more than 200 seats. However, at Ferraz they also manage figures and, despite the situation in Ceuta, they still calculate that there is the capacity for the PSOE to hold on (forming a government is another matter entirely, as it would depend on the health of the partners).

Their data indicate a decline following the crisis in the autonomous city, but not a definitive collapse. In other words: if this were the Tour de France, the PP would be wearing the yellow jersey and would be managing their lead without taking unnecessary risks. The PSOE would be their immediate rival, at a real slipstream distance and seeing their back, aware that to achieve the surpass they will have to take advantage of the final descent: a section where they will have to take risks at every turn, knowing that if they make one more mistake, it will be lethal. Even this week, Pedro Sánchez dared to tell Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the plenary session that he would beat him in the next elections.

A socialist deputy consulted refers to this situation as a “miracle,” considering all the corruption and management crises that the Spanish government has had to navigate. “Our luck is Alberto Núñez Feijóo,” notes a socialist parliamentarian, as he considers that the PP leader fails to gain strength from any problem that arises for Sánchez, even though the polls show him as the winner.

The roadmap

Despite the difficult resolution of the Ceuta crisis –the executive admits that it will be a long process–, the PSOE believes that the framework remains either a government committed to social policies or the right and the far-right. This implies presenting Pedro Sánchez as someone who bothers the powerful with his decisions, even though the PSOE is far from being a revolutionary party. The expression this week in the Congress plenary session “I may be a dog, but I have no master” is no coincidence; it signifies a Sánchez against “the elites”. To do this, the legislative agenda in the coming weeks, according to sources from the Spanish government, goes through the following stages: the law on the protection of minors in digital environments; the validation of the decree-law that regulates interest groups in government and administration for the first time; giving impetus to the reform of the Constitution to “protect” the right to abortion; warming up engines for the general state budget, and in the case of the justice area, promoting the preliminary draft of the law on free legal assistance.

The project for the protection of minors in digital environments allows Sánchez to kill two birds with one stone: beyond fulfilling a promise, it is also a way to do battle against what he calls “techno-oligarchs”, allies of the Trump administration, and to combat “screens”, which the socialist government blames for the poor PISA results. And the one on lobbyists is a regulation that the socialist government will be able to play when the opposition reproaches it for corruption cases, mainly the Zapatero case, which will gain momentum with the start of the judicial year. In fact, in the socialist ranks, it is already taken for granted that the pressure will increase and that they may even charge the PSOE.

Catalonia in this final stretch also has its reserved space with three specific items: the financing system, the forgiveness of a part of the regional debt, and the practical application of the amnesty for the leaders of the Procés. The Spanish government knows that the Catalan issue is a double-edged sword because it puts the right on a war footing, but also that it gives it electoral fruits in the Principality. The fact that the Constitutional Court has to decide on the amnesty of Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras this autumn is a good carrot when negotiating the State budget. Accounts that the Moncloa knows are practically impossible to pass, but that can serve to outline its social model.

A global battle

That Pedro Sánchez wants to play the game in a global framework is not just an electoral strategy, but rather the PSOE are convinced that it is truly a battle on an international scale to draw a new correlation of forces. The sources consulted challenge one to take a map: Spain is the only government with weight in the European Union governed by the left, and in every election that takes place, the right and the far-right advance at the expense of social democracy. In fact, in the case of Europe, the United States' national security strategy clearly states that they will support like-minded “patriotic” parties throughout the continent. It was confirmed last weekend: Donald Trump congratulated the far-right Alternative for Germany after the victory in the Saxony-Anhalt elections.

But it is not only happening in Europe, but also on the American continent: apart from Trump and with the exception of Canada, Ibero-America has turned to the right with Javier Milei's Argentina, Abelardo de la Espriella's Colombia, Peru with Keiko Fujimori, Antonio Kast in Chile, or Daniel Noboa in Ecuador. And the only allies for Spain on the other side of the Atlantic are Lula da Silva's Brazil or Claudia Sheinbaum's Mexico. In this sense, the PSOE makes two reflections to Feijóo: first, that while in Germany the CDU repudiates the AfD, he hopes to embrace his counterparts in Spain, Vox, to govern; and second, they warn him to be careful when it comes to hijacking Santiago Abascal's discourse because, as has happened in Germany, he could end up overtaking him –they say–.

“A lot of money is being put in,” summarizes a socialist source regarding the efforts that the so-called far-right international is making so that the world turns towards the ideas of MAGA. Social networks would be their vehicle. Pedro Sánchez wants to set himself up as their antithesis, although there are already many people who believe that his nine lives have run out.