There is a chant that the right and the extreme right have championed throughout the legislature: “Pedro Sánchez, son of a bitch”. A slogan inaugurated by Isabel Díaz Ayuso in November 2023 during the PSOE leader's investiture debate. As he already did with “Perro Sanxe”, the Spanish president now wants to change the negative connotation of this insult, although the task is proving complicated for him. “I am working so that on November 29 many people will say 'Pedro Sánchez, what a son of a bitch'”. This is how he verbalized it in an interview on La Séptima, in which he also predicted that there will be a “historic mobilization” in the elections that will “exceed” 70% and expressed his “confidence” that the progressive majority will prevail: “They have written me off as retired during many elections and here I continue, contributing to Social Security”, he said when journalist Javier Ruiz asked him if he would leave politics if he could not continue governing.

The trains have failed again this morning. The Rodalies service is operating this Monday with widespread delays. Why?

As the days go by, the PSOE tries to put behind it the crisis over the railway tragedy in Urda (Toledo) and tries to refocus on the campaign that had begun before the accident that left 69 dead. This is what Pedro Sánchez did this Saturday from Tarragona: appealing to the dilemma of a progressive government in the face of the "far-right international" that in Spain is personified by the PP and Vox. The Spanish prime minister, however, added an element that until a few days ago he could not yet use in his favor: the victory of the Democrats in the United States, which is added to that of Lula da Silva in Brazil to give hope to the Spanish left-wing electorate. For this reason, the socialist leader has called for mobilization and has asked for a "broad majority" that will allow stopping the aspirations of the PP and Vox to reach the Spanish government. "If we vote en masse, we send Feijóo and Abascal home," shouted Sánchez.

The PSOE resumes the electoral race for November 29th. Pre-campaign events will once again occupy Pedro Sánchez's agenda starting this Friday afternoon, with a rally in Valencia. Bewilderment took hold of them after the train accident in Urda (Toledo), but once the three days of official mourning passed – with Óscar Puente's resignation as Minister of Transport materialized and the XXX Ibero-American Summit, which is being held in Madrid this Wednesday and Thursday, on track –, Pedro Sánchez's team wants to recover the enthusiastic attitude they had before all this turmoil. Internally, but also among the party membership. That is why they will have to roll up their sleeves, because the tragic accident in Toledo, the second in less than a year on the high-speed rail, has left the railway in the State and its management damaged. Among the socialist ranks, however, they believe they will succeed. In addition to Valencia this Friday, Sánchez will hold events in Tarragona and Bilbao over the weekend.

Until September 26, 2023, the day of the failed investiture debate of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Congress, Óscar Puente (Valladolid, 1968) was practically unknown to the general public. Pedro Sánchez's assignment to this rank-and-file PSOE deputy, former mayor of Valladolid, to give the reply to the PP leader catapulted him media-wise. Especially due to his provocative tone and the pungent content of his speech. That day, articles proliferated explaining who Puente was, the surprise of the day, who soon took on the labels of "scourge" and "battering ram" of the right, and became one of the socialists most hated by the populars. An animosity that has been increasing during the legislature following his appointment as Minister of Transport, a position he has combined with acting as a doberman for the head of the Spanish executive against the attacks of the opposition.

The Spanish commitment to high-speed rail has always seemed to me a matter worthy of analysis in political, sociological, and even historical terms, because it has transcended governments and parties and has established itself as a mantra of public management, which reveals, in my opinion, some obsessions that have become unhealthy.

The electoral pre-campaign has been blown to pieces. Until the accident in Toledo, what we had was a comeback for the PSOE that, even if it might not have been enough to break the PP-Vox majority, was enough to put Alberto Núñez Feijóo in a bad spot and weaken his leadership. Now the PSOE and the left have no choice but to activate survival mode to prevent the conservative wave from running them over. And this opens up the range of other multiple battles.

For some time now, it has been said that Spanish politics is immersed in a state of "bated breath." The reason: sudden events, some even difficult to believe or accept, that cause a 180-degree turn in the public agenda. The latest, the train accident in Urda, in the province of Toledo, which has so far left 69 people dead. The difference from other moments is that the accident catches the Spanish government and the PSOE in the middle of the electoral pre-campaign. And even though there is still a month left before the state elections, the magnitude of the tragedy is a blow that is difficult to absorb. Pedro Sánchez's political strategy is also forced to change completely.

I don't know about you, but this week, around Barcelona, I've been told more than once: “I’m not moving from home on Saturday”. There are people who are afraid of going down to the city center and running into violent hooded individuals who destroy shop windows, loot stores, and burn cars and motorcycles to build barricades. The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Urban Guard are preparing a maximum-effort security operation, highly visible, and the tactic for dealing with the violent protesters will not be the same. Let’s hope it’s not necessary. And that, if it is, it works.

We have been talking about nothing but the train accident in Toledo for 24 hours now, where 68 people have died as of yesterday, for the moment. So I take all the preliminaries as read. Political consequences: trains in Toledo, where 68 people have died as of yesterday, for the moment. So I take all the preliminaries as read. Political consequences: Óscar Puente cannot continue to be minister of Transport for even one more minute. This year 2026, 115 people have been killed on Spanish trains: 46 in Andalusia, 1 in Gelida and 68 in Toledo. And one accident is a tragedy. Three accidents with 115 deaths are not just three tragedies. They are the system.

Pedro Sánchez has decided to bet firmly in this electoral pre-campaign on exploiting his most personal and human profile, a terrain where he feels comfortable and which contrasts with the difficulties of the Popular Party's Alberto Núñez Feijóo to go off-script without making mistakes. After his appearance on La revuelta, the Spanish president continues his tour of casual interviews and has landed on the podcast Keep it cutre, where he assured that he decided to call early general elections during a family lunch on Sunday, October 4th, one day before publicly announcing the call: "Both my parents and my wife told me that it was necessary to call elections. [...] That was where I made the decision," he said in the podcast episode where he is interviewed, hosted by Ángela Henche and Albanta San Román and published this morning on YouTube.

Tonight it was the turn of the Basque Country, in Bilbao, chaos in the streets. Burning of dumpsters, burning of cars and motorcycles, running, 19 arrested by the Ertzaintza, of which 11 are minors, at the end of an event called by Vito Quiles. The Basque police, by the way, were surprised because it took them an hour to start intervening.

Significant movements in the Plus Ultra case. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has formally requested the indictment of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for embezzlement for having kept the jewels gifted to him by the King of Saudi Arabia in 2007 during an official visit to Spain, according to the document to which ARA has had access. It was the former Spanish president who, a month ago, assured the judge that this was the origin of the most valuable jewels that the UDEF found in his office last May. Prosecutor Elena Lorente now asserts that this may lead to the presumption that he also committed a crime of embezzlement. For the moment, in the part of the case related to the jewels, he is only being investigated for tax crimes and smuggling.

For me, when instead of saying “a hug” they send me a circumspect baby wearing sunglasses or a kitten drinking a cocktail on WhatsApp, I really feel like pouring myself a few deciliters of rat poison in a Pompadour glass. Now in the groups of what already it is very noticeable when someone has received a new meme. Whatever you say, they send it to you to finish you off. It is like this reader we have at ARA (I love him infinitely) who, on every piece of news, whether it talks about Brad Pitt, the DANA, or the queues on the AP-7, complains about Spain by calling it “Ñ”. Well then. We were few and now the PP has appeared. Now –and I fall asleep while writing this– they have made a video with artificial intelligence (it goes without saying that the intelligence is artificial and not natural) to mock and ridicule the PSOE. Since –zzz...– Pedro Sánchez made a video playing with the double meaning of "left-handed (in Spanish, left-handed), now they have tweeted another where several PSOE members appear (using artificial intelligence), among them José Luis Ábalos praising prostitution. “If going to prostitutes is being a leftist, then I am a leftist,” they make him say.

The most common question these days among the journalists in Congress themselves is: "And you, what do you think will happen on November 29th? Who will win? It is curious to verify that, at first, practically everyone takes it for granted that the PP will prevail and that it will govern with the support of a few dozen Vox deputies, between 50 and 70. However, if the person being asked looks unsure, their interlocutor also begins to search for arguments to give consistency to their prediction, as if they needed to convince themselves that their forecast is well-founded and a foregone conclusion.

"Let them hear it loud and clear: I love you". This is how the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, addressed his wife during a rally in Fuenlabrada following the federal committee meeting that approved the PSOE's candidate lists for November 29th. In an event charged with high emotion, Sánchez began his speech by referring to Begoña Gómez, his wife, who is facing trial and was seated in the front row. "They have tried to break us in every way and have achieved just the opposite. Today we are more united and stronger than ever. Let them hear it loud and clear: I love you," he declared, while also thanking her for being his wife and the mother of his daughters. Then Gómez went up to the stage, and they hugged and kissed before the audience's ovation. Later, he made a post saying that he loves her with the video of the scene.

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has stood by the spokesperson for the PSOE executive, Montse Mínguez, following the controversy over her partner's real estate properties. When asked from Brussels about the real estate management companies of Mínguez's partner, Sergi Vélez, the socialist leader stressed that he "of course" supports her. Mínguez was ratified this Wednesday as the lead candidate for the socialists for Lleida.

The first barometer from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) following the housing protests has catapulted the PSOE, which would position itself as the leading force nearly twelve points ahead of the PP. According to the survey conducted between October 1st and 6th, coinciding with the vote in Congress on the Maricarmen decree and the announcement of a snap election, the socialists would obtain 34% of the votes, while the popular party would fall to 22.2%. Regarding the barometer from a month ago, Pedro Sánchez's party would grow by three points (in September the CIS gave them a voting estimate of 31%), while Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party would retreat by 3.3 points (compared to the 25.5% in the previous survey). Unlike the PP's decline, the CIS forecasts growth for Vox, which goes from 16.6% to 17.1% (half a point more) and reduces the distance with the popular party to just 5.1 points, when in September it was 8.9 points.

Former Adif president Isabel Pardo de Vera, indicted at the National Court in the framework of the Ábalos case, shows herself willing to collaborate with the justice system and fires back at the PSOE. In an interview with El Mundo, published in the midst of the general election pre-campaign, the also former Secretary of State for Transport states that former minister José Luis Ábalos and other Spanish government officials had proposed "loyal people" to "place in positions of the Adif executive leadership". "Up to almost twenty resumes", she asserts, and adds that she "always" refused because the candidates did not meet the necessary "qualifications".

Pedro Sánchez Castejón (Madrid, 1972) is, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, "an enigma, wrapped in a mystery inside a hieroglyph". Is he the cynical, cold and unscrupulous monster that the right paints? Or is he the empathetic and compassionate leader for the people who are struggling most that the left defends? Is he an aspiring dictator or, on the contrary, the last wall standing against the global far-right? The only certainty is that between the current Pedro Sánchez and the one who burst onto the political scene in 2014 there is an abyss. And it is this evolution, riddled with dramatic twists, changes of opinion and an undeniable capacity to overcome adversity and adapt reality to his needs, that has led to what we know today as Sanchismo. This is the story of the great prestidigitator of recent Spanish political history.