Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatens to quit, putting Spain on course for elections

Sanchez has built a career on unexpected comebacks and surprise decisions, many of which he doesn’t even share with his closest collaborators.

“This attack is unprecedented and so grave and crass that I need to stop and think with my wife,” Sanchez wrote in his letter. “Many times, we forget that politicians are people. And I can say without shame that I’m a man deeply in love with my wife who watches helplessly the mud that is thrown on her day after day.”

Sanchez framed the court proceedings against his wife as part of a broader strategy of “harassment and destruction” against him by the far right.

Spain has a long-tradition of keeping the private lives of its leaders’ families out of the public spotlight.

The letter comes against the backdrop of political discourse that has become increasingly aggressive over the past nine years. In 2015, Sanchez sparked a massive controversy when he called Mariano Rajoy, a former prime minister, “indecent” in a debate, a word that would barely register in the current context — with politicians calling rivals liars, insulting each other and even using profanity in public.

The scandal has been widely covered for weeks by a group of news websites, most of them critical of the government. In his letter, Sanchez said that the judge will call as witnesses the heads of these websites which are “clearly right and far-right.”

Sanchez specifically accused Feijoo, who heads the conservative People’s Party, and Santiago Abascal, of the far-right party Vox, of being necessary players in the alleged harassment strategy he denounced.

Gomez, who has mostly kept a low public profile since her husband became premier in 2018, has found herself in the spotlight following news reports that she once had a business relationship with the owners of an airline, which went on to receive a large state-backed rescue package during the pandemic.

Feijoo’s PP has seized on the Gomez scandal to attack Sanchez, calling on the premier and his wife to provide formal explanations. To avoid a conflict of interest, the PP says Sanchez should have recused himself from a cabinet meeting in which the corporate rescue package was approved.

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(With assistance from Joao Lima.)

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