It is paradoxical to think that someone who leads a government with record female representation (12 ministers out of 22 members: for this reason he was just awarded the “He For She” United Nations award) could be put in difficulty precisely because of women. Yet it happens to Pedro Sánchez. In fact, this attention to gender is a distinctive trait of the Spanish prime minister: «Only through feminism will societies, systems, ways of life improve» he stated in 2021, for the March 8 holiday. But now, as in a sort of nemesis, the problems of those closest to him risk costing him dearly in the coming months. First of all, there is his wife, Begoña Gómez, to whom Sánchez has been married for twenty years. Then there is Teresa Ribera, his “deputy”, who will now also be Ursula von der Leyen’s second in the new European Commission. And, again, there is Nadia Calviño, former Minister of Economy, María Jesús Montero, responsible for Finance, finally that of Labor and also former Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz.
But let’s go in order. Last April a judicial investigation into his wife Begoña Gómez (woe, rightly, to call her Sánchez) due to hypotheses of corruption and influence peddling led the prime minister to seriously evaluate the opportunity to resign (after five days of reflection, he instead decided to continue his mandate). According to the accusations, Gómez exploited his privileged position to favor a private company in a substantial public financing. At the center of the investigation were some private meetings that took place at Moncloa, the government headquarters, in 2020 between Gómez, who was then head of the IE Africa Center foundation, and Javier Hidalgo, the CEO of Globalia, an Iberian tourism group which owns Air Europa. In the same year, and after the meetings between the two personalities, the Spanish airline received a public contribution of 475 million euros. Gómez, very independent and ambitious, evidently shows the limitation that often stands out in the companions of Spanish prime ministers, as the editorialist of the newspaper El Mundo, Silvia Nieto, perfidiously underlines. «The problem with their role is the “queen syndrome”: they cannot be particularly ambitious, because Spain does not need a first lady, as there is already the king’s wife…». According to rumours, it was Gómez who insist that Sánchez present himself in the 2017 socialist primaries, to regain the leadership of the party. In any case, a new line of investigation is now opening which would concern public funding from 1.7 million euros, received, since December 2020, from the NGO Cives Mundi, whose godmother is Gómez himself.
But the lure of power, and an equally good dose of ambition, they must also have had an effect on other leading figures in the Spanish executive. And two of them were nominated by the prime minister for EU institutions, Ribera in Brussels, and Calviño to head the EIB (European Investment Bank). Perhaps an attempt to spare them from media pressure – and which risks touching them – on what appears to be one of the most embarrassing episodes of public corruption in recent Spanish news. Former Transport Minister José Luís Ábalos and his assistant Koldo García are accused of bribes for an 82.5 million euro supply of Ffp2 masks destined for the Canary Islands in 2020. «We are witnessing the collapse of a government in slow motion. His attempts to prolong the legislature are perhaps effective, but politically painful” says Nacho Cardero, director of El Confidencial, author of the first scoop on the scandal. The leader of the popular party Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in recent days, echoed this: «There is no longer room for corruption in the Moncloa Palace. It is necessary to open doors and windows”, and he invited ERC and Junts, the two Catalan independence groups that support the executive, to no longer be “accomplices of a corrupt government”.
Feijóo’s words arrive after the testimony before the judges of one of the protagonists of the affair, Victor de Aldama. Fixer, former sports agent, he would have been a “facilitator” for the payment of sums of money to the former Spanish Minister of Transport (around 400 thousand euros) and to his assistant (230 thousand euros). And Aldama also allegedly referred to meetings with Calviño and Ribera to the magistrates… Not only that: he also spoke of contacts he had with Montero and his chief of staff, Santos Cerdán León. «We know that for socialists the opinion of the people only matters when it has a positive effect on them. That’s why, when they don’t get it, they buy it” comments caustic, the historian and columnist Frans Carrillo Guerrero. Regardless of the responsibilities ascertained, these involvements are certain damage to one’s image. Among the various stumbles, however, in recent weeks it is precisely the one involving former deputy prime minister Teresa Ribera that has created the biggest headaches for Sánchez. According to the opposition, with the People’s Party in the lead, in fact, her responsibilities in the management of the “Dana” flood in Valencia would be evident, since as Minister of Ecological Transition she was also head of Civil Protection. And also for this reason its role in Europe is not compatible. To overcome the impasse, which risked jeopardizing the appointment of his dauphin, Sánchez had to personally engage with the president of the Von der Leyen commission, guaranteeing the green light from the socialist group to Raffaele Fitto, in exchange for the “yes » of the European People’s Party to their candidate. Ribera would be accused, in addition to the poor management of the relief efforts, of a “climate dogmatism” – as defined by the Vox spokesperson, José María Figaredo – which would have prevented the containment works of the Turia, the river that crosses Valencia, from being carried out. These lack of measures, according to experts, are an important contributing factor in the floods at the end of October which caused 221 deaths and an initial, very provisional, toll of over 31 billion euros in damage.
After the information in the Senate on the events in the Catalan city, made by Ribera on November 20th, Yolanda Díaz, leader of the far-left Sumar formation, was the first to embrace it. A gesture, one wonders, whether dictated more by female solidarity or by the awareness of sharing with her an ideal “defendant’s bench”… Díaz’s party, in fact, has also been involved in a scandal, this time of a sexual nature. About a month ago, mentor and former spokesperson Íñigo Errejón Galván was accused of harassment by several witnesses. A very hard blow for the hyper-feminist leader of Sumar, today in a strong crisis of consensus but always a thorn in the prime minister’s side. His extremist positions are especially difficult to reconcile with the government’s economic policy, faced with the usual and difficult challenge of approving the budget law. According to a recent survey by the authoritative Sociometric agency, the approval of the People’s Party has now risen to 34 percent, a good eight points above the Socialists. In the event of elections, the center-right (with the People’s Party and the right of Vox) would obtain 192 seats, well above the 176 of the absolute majority. The coming winter, however attentive to diversity, promises to be very harsh for Sánchez.
