- 7 weeks ago
Spain’s political landscape has entered one of its most polarizing and closely watched periods in recent memory.
At the center of that storm stands Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, a figure praised by supporters for resilience and criticized by opponents for concentration of power.
The phrase “enemy of the Spanish people” has been used in highly charged debate, reflecting deep frustration among political rivals and segments of the public.
While the expression is rhetorical rather than literal, it captures the intensity of opposition directed at Sánchez by Spanish politicians across the ideological spectrum.
To understand why Sánchez has been politically challenged so forcefully, it is necessary to examine coalition tensions, parliamentary strategy, institutional conflict, and public distrust.
At the center of that storm stands Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, a figure praised by supporters for resilience and criticized by opponents for concentration of power.
The phrase “enemy of the Spanish people” has been used in highly charged debate, reflecting deep frustration among political rivals and segments of the public.
While the expression is rhetorical rather than literal, it captures the intensity of opposition directed at Sánchez by Spanish politicians across the ideological spectrum.
To understand why Sánchez has been politically challenged so forcefully, it is necessary to examine coalition tensions, parliamentary strategy, institutional conflict, and public distrust.
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00:11Spanish politicians are openly calling Pedro Sánchez the enemy of the Spanish people.
00:15After years of scandals, fierce battles over immigration, and accusations that he'd do
00:19anything to stay in power, they've finally had enough. They're uniting against him,
00:23and their next move could destroy Sánchez politically. Let's get into it.
00:27The label. The phrase came from the Spanish right first. In February of 2026, at campaign events
00:33across Aragon and other regions, Santiago Abascal of Vox called Sánchez an enemy of the Spanish people.
00:39He tied the label to immigration, which he framed as an engineered invasion, to the deals with Bildu
00:44and the Catalan separatists, and to what he described as the occupation of the state for
00:48one man's survival. Abascal built the same case on the floor of Congress during the amnesty debate.
00:53He listed the state of alarm during the pandemic, Agenda 2030, illegal immigration,
00:58and released prisoners, then delivered the charge in one line.
01:12Abascal returned to the phrase away from the chamber as well, this time overspending. He set the cost of
01:18housing an immigrant in a state center, against the cost of housing an elderly Spaniard in a
01:22nursing home, and against the pay of a soldier, then made the point plain.
01:31The attack then went global. Elon Musk picked up the same idea and aimed it at Sánchez in front of
01:36hundreds of millions of followers, branding him a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain,
01:40after the government moved to restrict social media for users under 16, and to hold platform
01:44bosses liable for illegal content. Musk came back to the theme over the plan to regularize migrants,
01:50and framed that as treason too. Spanish conservative outlets carried the charge in their own words,
01:54writers in the pages tied to the center-right described Sánchez as the man destroying Spain,
01:59a leader who treats institutions as tools of power, and who betrayed his earlier promises
02:03on corruption and on the amnesty. Long-form critiques of what they call Sánchismo argued
02:08that the one goal is to stay in Moncloa, at any cost to the country. Mainstream leaders of the
02:12Partido Popular avoid the exact words. Alberto Núñez Feijú and regional figures such as Isabel
02:18Díaz Ayuso reach instead for betrayal, humiliation and submission, while pushing the same underlying
02:23idea that Sánchez puts power and minority partners ahead of the Spanish people as a whole.
02:28The phrase itself carries a long history. Enemies of the people ran through the tribunals
02:32of the French Revolution, sat at the center of a play by Henrik Ibsen, and returned in recent years
02:37when Donald Trump aimed it at the press. In Spain it reaches back further, into the civil war and the
02:42Franco years, and into the argument after the transition about who truly speaks for Spain.
02:46Sánchez helped open that ground himself. He has called the opposition destructive rather than
02:50political, accused judges and reporters of running a maquina del fango, a mud machine,
02:55and described the cases against his family as coordinated harassment. That friend and enemy
03:00logic invited the same maximum language back at him. One more piece of the charge is the reversal.
03:05Sánchez rose in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform that toppled Mariano Raj, and the same
03:11word now brands the man who promised to clean up Spanish politics. The trials that gave the label
03:16its teeth. Rhetoric alone would have faded. What turned it into a genuine crisis was a run of
03:22investigations, trials and convictions that reached deep into Sánchez's inner circle, into his own
03:27home, and into his family, all driven by Spanish judges and Spanish prosecutors. The heaviest blow
03:32landed on José Luis Abalos, once Sánchez's transport minister, and his trusted organization's
03:38secretary inside the party. In June of 2026, the Supreme Court read out a sentence that stunned
03:43even a country used to political scandal. The case grew out of the darkest weeks of the pandemic,
03:54when kickbacks were paid on public contracts for millions of face masks and medical supplies.
03:59The court found a criminal organization with a clear division of roles, and it convicted Abalos
04:03of bribery, embezzlement, influence peddling, and membership of that structure. His former aide,
04:08Koldo García, took roughly 19 years for the same web of crimes. It stands as one of the longest
04:13prison terms handed to a former Spanish minister since democracy returned. Then came the twist that
04:19stung ordinary Spaniards the most. The businessman at the center of the payments, Victor de Aldama,
04:24walked out of the same court a partly free man.
04:38Aldama had confessed, named names, and pointed at the party headquarters, and the court rewarded that
04:43cooperation by keeping him out of a cell. The man who admitted paying the bribes reported for
04:47community service, while the ministers he paid followed the ruling by video link from prison.
04:51In its own words, the Supreme Court warned that corruption erodes democracy and compromises the
04:55quality of citizens before the law, the exact language the opposition now throws back at Sanche.
05:00The damage did not stop at the party. Santos Cerdon, the man who took over Abalos' role as the
05:05organizational engine of the PSOE, fell under investigation for bribery, influence peddling,
05:10and a place inside the same network, along with questions about whether party machinery was used to
05:15gather information on the investigators themselves. Worse for Sanche, the storm crossed his own front door.
05:20A Madrid judge charged his wife, Begonia Gomez, with influence peddling, embezzlement, business
05:25corruption, and misappropriation of funds, in a probe centered on her university master's program,
05:30and on whether she leaned on her position as the prime minister's wife to pull in sponsors and
05:34favors. In the middle of 2026, a court ordered her to surrender her passport over flight risk concerns,
05:41in a case that began with a complaint from the group Manos Limpias. His brother went down the same
05:45month. In July of 2026, a court in Batijas convicted David Sanche of administrative misconduct over a
05:51public post shaped to fit him at the socialist-led provincial council, cleared him of influence
05:56peddling, and banned him from public office for nine years. Sanche himself has never been charged
06:01in any of it. Yet with a former minister buried under a 24-year term, his party's fixer under
06:06investigation, and his wife and brother in the dock, the picture the opposition wanted was complete.
06:10By June of 2026, about 70% of Spaniards, including a large share of PSOE voters,
06:16told pollsters he should resign. The fight over ordinary life
06:20The trials proved the label to the right. The everyday files gave it reach into millions of
06:25homes, and no file cut deeper than immigration. In the opening weeks of 2026, the government
06:30launched an extraordinary regularization by royal decree, a scheme that let people already living in
06:35Spain apply for a one-year renewable permit to reside and work. The rules set a clear bar.
06:40Applicants had to be in the country before the end of 2025, to show roughly five months of
06:44continuous residence, and to hold a clean criminal record. Sanche sold it as plain realism,
06:49arguing that these people already work here, pay into the system, and help hold up an aging
06:53country with too few workers and a strained pension bill. The government first pointed to
06:58around 500,000 likely beneficiaries. By the deadline at the end of June, more than 1 million
07:03applications had poured in, a huge share of them from Latin America. The plan sat inside a long
07:08Spanish habit of periodic regularizations, yet its size and its timing made it explosive
07:13across a divided Europe. For Vox, the decree was proof of everything Abascal had warned about,
07:18and he made the contrast personal, weighing what the state spends on new arrivals against what it
07:22spends on its own. Sanche answered with numbers of his own. He argued that irregular arrivals had been
07:27falling for two years running, and blamed a fresh surge on a Supreme Court ruling that human trafficking
07:32mafias had read as an opening, which pushed a wave of new arrivals toward the enclave of Ceuta.
07:38On the raw economy, Sanche holds his strongest cards. Spain grew its output by about 2.8% in 2025,
07:44well ahead of the Euro area, with unemployment falling below 10% for the first time since 2008
07:49and a sharp rise in permanent contracts. Spain took a share of net new jobs across the European Union far
07:55larger than its size, helped along by next-generation EU funds, and forecasts for 2026 still pointed to
08:01solid growth of around 2%. The government waives those figures as proof that its hands are steady.
08:06The counterattack aims at the gap between the charts and the kitchen table. Housing has become a
08:10structural failure, with double-digit jumps in prices and rents, and a generation of young Spaniards
08:15locked out of a home of their own. The government's housing law and its later public housing plans
08:19drew fire from the opposition, and from independent analysts, as too small or even self-defeating.
08:25Critics also argue that part of the job growth rides on the same immigration the government
08:30is defending, and that strong headline totals sit beside falling living standards for many
08:35who were born here. The rest of daily governance handed the opposition more ammunition.
08:39Wildfires tore through the country across the 2025 and 2026 seasons, including the largest recorded
08:44fire in Spanish history near Avila, which burned around 50,000 hectares, and set off a blame
08:50war between Moncloa and the regions over prevention and staffing. Sanche cast the fires as
08:55proof of a climate emergency and called for a national pact, while critics accused the government
08:59of thin prevention, ideological priorities, and an on-and-off use of emergency powers. Long
09:04stretches without an approved national budget left the government leaning on decrees and last-minute
09:08deals with its partners, which critics read as a minority administration that can no longer govern
09:13in the normal way. The push to restrict social media for children under 16, the very move that drew
09:18Musk into the fight, added a culture war front on top of the rest. The world stage. If immigration
09:25lit the fuse at home, foreign policy carried the traitor charge across borders, and the loudest
09:30flashpoint was Gaza. Under Sanche, Spain became one of the most critical Western European voices toward
09:35Israel, and the Prime Minister reached for words that few Western leaders would use. Behind the language
09:40sat a chain of hard steps. Spain recognized a Palestinian state in 2024 alongside Ireland
09:55and Norway, then tightened the screws further, writing a full arms embargo against Israel into law
09:59in October of 2025, limiting military transit through Spanish ports and airspace, and pulling its ambassador
10:05out for good in March of 2026 while leaving the embassy under a chargé d'affaires. Sanche went
10:10further still, announcing nine fresh actions aimed at stopping what he called the genocide,
10:14at pursuing those behind it, and at backing the Palestinian people. Israel and its allies fired
10:19back that the government was courting anti-Semitism and using Gaza to bury its scandals at home, a charge
10:24Madrid rejected. The stance thrilled the Spanish left and much of public opinion, and it strained ties with
10:28Israel, with parts of Washington, and with several European partners. The rift with the United States
10:34ran just as deep. Spain stood alone as the one NATO member that refused to sign up to the alliance's
10:40new target of five percent of output on defense, negotiating a quiet understanding to stay near
10:45about 2.1 percent, and arguing that a leap to five would gut the welfare state. During the American and
10:50Israeli campaign against Iran in early 2026, Sanche denied the United States the use of the shared bases
10:56at Rota and Moran, and tightened access to Spanish airspace, summing it up with the old slogan,
11:00no to war, and comparing parts of the American approach to the Iraq war of 2003. Donald Trump
11:05hit back in public, threatened trade pain, and painted Madrid as a free rider inside the Western
11:10club. Sanche did not soften elsewhere either. On Venezuela, he refused to recognize Nicolás Maduro
11:16as legitimate while also opposing unilateral American military moves in the region, and he joined
11:21regional statements that condemned certain American operations, a line the right read as tenderness toward
11:26an authoritarian left. On China he flew to Beijing more than once chaste investment, and in his speeches
11:32they're pressed for shared prosperity, for global institutions that represent more of the world, and for
11:37a larger Chinese hand in ending wars, which Atlanticist critics called naive and dangerous. Each of these
11:42choices found two mirrors, to his base at home and to admirers in the global south. This was a values
11:48-driven
11:48foreign policy that held international law to a single standard, from Ukraine to Gaza to Iran to Venezuela,
11:54and refused to bow to outside pressure. To the opposition and the international right, the same
11:58record proved a leader willing to sell out alliance solidarity and Spanish security for ideology and
12:04short-term domestic gain, soft on the danger from Russia and Iran, and treated by some European
12:08governments as an outlier who made unity harder to hold. That is exactly the soil in which the traitor
12:14language grew. DAMAJUID, BUT STILL STANDING
12:18So did Spanish politicians actually destroy Pedro Sánchez? The honest answer is that they wounded
12:23him badly and still could not pull him down. The numbers tell the first half of that story.
12:28Through 2026, pollster after pollster placed the Partido Popular ahead of the PSOE, often by 5-7
12:34points or more, with Sigma dues, in Weimar, Sociomatrica, and others putting the PP near 32-34% against
12:4126-28 for the socialists, and the combined right of PP and Vox frequently clearing 50%. Sanchez trailed
12:47Feijou in most head-to-head leadership tests, and that June survey showing around 70% wanting
12:52him gone, roughly 44% of them his own voters, captured a country that had turned. The damage
12:58stacked in layers. The convictions of Abalos and the probes into Serdan tore at the party's
13:02cohesion and shredded its anti-corruption brand. The charges against Gómez and David Sánchez made
13:06the crisis personal in a way no party scandal could. Years of minority government, endless decrees,
13:11and deals with separatists fed a wider cynicism about how Spain is now run. And the opposition
13:16wove corruption, amnesty, immigration, and foreign policy into one clean story of a leader who serves
13:22power and ideology before his country. A story Musk and conservative media then broadcast to the world.
13:28Sánchez fought back with a fixed set of moves. He drew a line between real wrongdoing by individuals
13:32and what he calls fabricated attacks on his family, leaned on the mud machine and lawfare narrative to
13:37paint judges and Manos limpias in the right-wing press as one coordinated campaign,
13:41and pointed at growth, jobs, and social gains as his defense. He cast the opposition as purely
13:46destructive and himself as the shield of democracy and the welfare state against the far right. He
13:50used Gaza, Iran, and NATO spending to fire up the progressive base. And he flatly refused early
13:56elections, betting that time until 2027, a strong economy or an opposition slip could turn the tide.
14:03The strategy kept him breathing. His nationalist and left partners went on providing parliamentary cover.
14:08No motion of no confidence has yet succeeded. And the fragmentation of the left and the shape
14:12of the electoral system all slowed the bleeding. His party kept a solid core all the same, among older
14:17voters, public sector workers and Spaniards who value social spending or fear a government of PP and Vox.
14:29The amnesty and the deals behind it never settled Catalan or Basque demands,
14:34and instead locked in a permanent negotiation that many Spaniards outside those regions resent.
14:39Los acusados se sienten en el banquillo y en que los criminales vivan entre rejas y no sentados en
14:45un escaño. Abascal, for his part, made clear he sees this as a countdown rather than an ending.
14:49He closed his speech in Congress on the image the whole story points toward, a day of reckoning at
14:54the ballot box and in the courtroom, with the roles of judge and accused reversed. That is where the
14:59destruction stalls. Pedro Sánchez remains Prime Minister, held up by fragile arithmetic and by his own
15:04skill at branding every attack as illegitimate noise. The rhetoric named him an enemy of the people,
15:09the courts jailed his circle, the policies angered millions, and the polls turned against him,
15:14and still he governs. Whether all of that adds up to true destruction, or only a slow retreat will be
15:19settled by Spanish voters in 2027, or sooner, if the numbers in parliament finally break.