Sacrificing his own people to resist Moncloa
BarcelonaFaced with the devastating report from the UCO, the Civil Guard unit leading the investigation into the Koldo case, Pedro Sánchez had only one option to try to protect himself in the Moncloa Palace. Repeat with Santos Cerdán, his right-hand man until now, the same operation he already carried out with José Luis Ábalos, his previous right-hand man: portray him as a rotten apple within the party, distance himself from his organization secretary, and dispel suspicions that this is a case of systemic corruption by the PSOE and the government, despite the fact that in the Civil Guard report.
This strategy by the Spanish president became evident at the very beginning of Thursday's press conference: Sánchez apologized, promised an external audit of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), and condemned Santos Cerdán. For the second time, he sacrificed his closest confidant and even said it had been a mistake to trust them. In fact, it wasn't the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) who spoke about Cerdán's presumption of innocence, but rather the secretary general of Junts (Junts), Jordi Turull, with whom the third-ranking Socialist party leader has established a relationship of trust through the legislative pact. Cerdán was Carles Puigdemont's interlocutor in Switzerland. Aitor Esteban (PNV) also expressed surprise that Sánchez had already issued the ruling based on the UCO report.
Pedro Sánchez is attempting a pirouette that from the outside seems almost impossible: on the one hand, defending himself against the corruption that plagues his entourage by taking up the banner of anti-corruption (he has boasted of acting decisively, unlike the PP); and, on the other, actively and passively declaring that, despite being the secretary general of the PSOE, he knew nothing about what his organizing secretaries (first Ábalos and then Cerdán) were doing. In an attempt to hold on to power in the Moncloa, the Spanish president has decided to get rid of his own, those accused of corruption. The core of the Peugeot (Ábalos, Cerdán, and Koldo) that accompanied Sánchez on tour in 2017 to regain the general secretary position of the PSOE has come to nothing eight years later.
Sánchez has only one short-term advantage: his governing partners, from Sumar to Junts and Esquerra, including Podemos, are unwilling to support a motion of no confidence in favor of the PP and Vox. And even less so at a key moment for the pro-independence parties, with the amnesty pending before the Constitutional Court. However, the UCO report marks a turning point for the government and may be just the beginning of what's to come: the resistance manual is running out of chapters, especially when the fight against corruption was the spearhead for ousting the PP from the Moncloa.
