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Pedro Sánchez Is Living on Borrowed Time

Spain’s prime minister has become a global progressive icon. But at home, his government is hanging by a thread.

Pedro Sánchez at the Congress of Deputies in Madrid on June 25, 2026.

On April 17, as Europe’s 1986 hit song “The Final Countdown” boomed through the PA system, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s former Socialist prime minister, entered the room at the two-day Global Progressive Mobilization in Barcelona to massive applause. The summit featured Latin American leaders like Brazilian President Lula da Silva, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other left-of-center luminaries. (Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani sent video messages.)

The mood was as combative as it was optimistic. “This is the most important progressive summit of the century,” Zapatero, who spoke on both days, said. “We are about to enter a cycle in which we’ll see the collapse of the denialist, anti-scientific discourse that doesn’t value peace and instead gets off on Tomahawk missiles.… Right-wing governments everywhere are in free fall.”

Spain’s current prime minister, social democrat Pedro Sánchez, was also there, basking in Zapatero’s glow. In his opening statement, Sánchez, who has emerged as Europe’s most outspoken critic of both the Trump administration and Israel, spoke plainly. “Resisting is not enough,” he said. “We must work to strengthen and perfect democracy every day.” His closing speech, the next day, turned up the volume. “They’ve tried to shame us for our ideas and our history,” he said. “But that ends today!… From now on, it’s them who will feel ashamed! Ashamed for being silent in the face of injustice. For exploiting workers, turning rights into commodities, or protecting the privileges of the elite.”

Yet today Zapatero’s “Final Countdown” rings ironic. On June 17, the 65-year-old statesman testified before Spain’s national criminal court after being indicted on multiple counts of corruption. Zapatero, who led his country’s government from 2004 to 2011, has claimed that he has broken no laws. But the scandal has irreparably damaged his reputation among Spain’s progressive electorate and dealt yet another blow to Sánchez, who for the past year has faced a steady stream of scandals and attacks and whose government is hanging by a thread.

In the span of two months, Zapatero’s support for Sánchez has gone from being one of the government’s most powerful assets to its fastest growing—and possibly fatal—liability. While Sánchez’s relationship to other old-guard Socialists, including former prime minister Felipe González, has long been testy, he has grown closer to Zapatero in recent years—to their mutual benefit.

For Zapatero, assuming a prominent role as an outspoken progressive stalwart and international ally of embattled left-wing regimes, especially in Latin America, has been a way to repair his reputation: In 2011, shortly before resigning, he buckled to international pressure in the wake of the Great Recession and helped push through a constitutional reform that privileged public debt reduction over social spending.

Progressives in Spain are conflicted. It was to protest Zapatero’s policies that many frustrated citizens took to the plazas on May 15, 2011, in what would become the indignados protests, one of the largest in the country’s history. That Zapatero has been indicted on corruption charges that may bear fruit thus comes as no surprise to those who came to political consciousness during the early 2010s. The same might be true of Sánchez, who came into politics as a centrist apparatchick.

Over the past year, a series of police investigations have linked some of Sánchez’s closest collaborators with alleged kickback schemes. On June 24, one of Sánchez’s right-hand men, a former minister of government and organizational head of the party, was sentenced to 24 years in prison; his successor is awaiting trial.

The latest corruption saga, which exploded in May, involves Leire Díaz, a zany, middle-aged party member who reportedly conspired with high-ranking officials to stymie the barrage of legal cases against Sánchez and the Socialists by digging up dirt on prosecutors and police commanders—an effort that, if real, failed spectacularly, given that those legal cases have gone full speed ahead. These cases hint that an indictment of Sánchez himself, which would be a first for a sitting prime minister in the history of Spain’s young democracy, may only be a matter of time.

Yet many on the left see this swirling set of legal crises as part of a concerted right-wing effort to torpedo one of the last progressive governments in Europe. They have witnessed how, over........

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