A new scandal hits the PSOE in Spain, Sanchez increasingly in the balance
A new scandal of a sexual nature is erupting within the party of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Spain. Accusations of “inappropriate behavior” leveled by several women against Paco Salazar, the person Pedro Sánchez had appointed as shadow leader of the PSOE, have led to his resignation from the post before the start of the meeting of the party’s Federal Committee, which will be held this weekend, where he was due to be confirmed. Salazar voluntarily leaves his post as Secretary of Analysis and Electoral Action in the Organizational Secretariat of the PSOE and has also asked to be temporarily removed from his responsibilities as Institutional Coordinator of the Presidency of the Government, which he also held, according to government sources. This is a very hard blow after the corruption allegations that hit the party’s number 3 Santos Cerdan, accused of having taken a bribe of 600,000 euros, and forced by the prime minister himself to resign from all his positions three weeks ago.
Salazar, Sánchez’s strongman and appointed to the Organizing Secretariat to “control” Santos Cerdán’s successor and prevent her from accumulating all the power in the party with this decentralization to four people, resigned due to accusations of harassment and “inappropriate language” by his own colleagues and subordinates in the PSOE. This seems even more serious considering how much Prime Minister Sánchez cares about gender equality, having formed a cabinet where women are the majority. The problem is that Salazar is also a key member of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet in Moncloa and, as a critical PSOE source pointed out to the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, “How can you justify a man who resigned because of such accusations staying in his Cabinet post? Behavior unworthy of the party,” he insists, “cannot be acceptable in the corridors of Moncloa.”
After publicly apologizing to the country for the corruption scandal, Sanchez appeared this time before the party leaders, who seem increasingly eager to get rid of him, stating that “I come before you, obviously with a heavy heart, but also with my determination intact and the same desire to face adversity and overcome it again. Because if anyone still has doubts, I repeat: we will continue to move forward, we will not back down from this challenge,” Sánchez said, adding: “We will take matters into our own hands, as we have always done. And we will defeat corruption, both inside and outside our organization.”
This time, Sánchez wanted to emphasize his direct responsibility in the appointment of high-ranking party officials who are currently under indictment or even in prison. “I want to apologize because I was wrong to place my trust in people who did not deserve it. The betrayal I suffered is painful both politically and personally. After all, I was the one who trusted them and I did not know how to understand what was behind it.”
But after this self-criticism, he firmly rejected the idea that everyone in politics is the same. "We are not like the others, nor like the corrupt people who have stained our acronym. No one should try to make us equal in indecency. This party is made up of hard-working, honest and humble people who would never put their hand in the cash register," he said. A justification that does not seem to have convinced his own party, which is loudly calling for an internal review to understand if it is actually possible to continue a government experience that seems to have really reached the end of the line. The president of Castilla La Mancha Emiliano Garcia Page, secretary of the PSOE in the region, addressed the prime minister and said "I ask you to consider the possibility of asking for a vote of confidence that we admit we do not have in Parliament, and I do not know if we would win it, but if not, do not lose sight of the option of calling elections". These are the unequivocal words of the president of the Region, considered a big shot in the party, during his speech at the meeting of the Federal Committee of the party, which is taking place behind closed doors at the headquarters of the Socialist Party in Calle Ferraz in Madrid.
The opposition, with the Popular Party in the lead, meeting in these days in a congress that should renew the confidence of the secretary Albert Nunez Feijoo, are loudly calling for early elections, which according to the polls would win with a large margin over the PSOE of Sanchez, who, aware of this, is trying to resist until the end. The secretary of the Popular Party is appealing to the reformist centrists of the former prime minister Maria Aznar to aim for the goal of 10 million votes, which would avoid the need to find alliances in parliament to obtain the confidence.
“The goal,” Feijóo explained, “is to be a party with 10 million voters.” That is, almost 2 million more than the 8.16 million votes obtained in 2023. And he wants to achieve this goal “from a central position,” to “reach more citizens without abandoning the ideology.” In short, for Prime Minister Sanchez the situation is getting worse and not even his most loyal supporters (at least those few who have not yet ended up in the crosshairs of the judiciary) dare to hope that the legislature can reach its natural end.
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The article A new scandal hits the PSOE in Spain, Sanchez increasingly in the balance comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/un-nuovo-scandalo-colpisce-il-psoe-in-spagna-sanchez-sempre-piu-in-bilico/ on Sat, 05 Jul 2025 17:49:48 +0000.