A shrewd politician who has built his career on uncertain wagers, Spain’s Pedro Sanchez burnished his reputation as a risk taker on April 29 after pulling back from a threat to potentially resign.
“I have learnt to push myself until the referee blows the final whistle,” the head of Spain’s Socialist party and a former basketball player wrote in his 2019 autobiography, “Resistance Manual”.
That “final whistle” had appeared to be in the offing on April 24 after Mr. Sanchez’s bombshell announcement that he was considering stepping down over a court investigation into his wife Begona Gomez for alleged influence-peddling and corruption.
“I need to stop and think,” he wrote in a four-page letter posted on X as he stepped back from public life for five days, only to end the suspense on April 29 saying he would stay on as premier.
The crisis erupted when an online newspaper said investigators had opened a preliminary probe into Ms. Gomez, prompting the right-wing opposition Popular Party, which has gone after Mr. Sanchez for months about his wife, to demand answers.
Mr. Sanchez’s bombshell response immediately switched the focus onto toxic political practices targeting politicians’ families, and to Spain’s political future.
Denying the move was a “political calculation”, Mr. Sanchez said he had decided to stay on despite “the politics of shame” which was increasingly being driven by “deliberate disinformation”.
“After days of reflection, I have a clear answer,” he said, pledging to stay on “with even more determination” then ever, and “to show the world how to defend democracy. Let’s put an end to this mudslinging,” he said.
With a charming smile and affable personality, the 52-year-old — often referred to as Mr. Handsome early in his career — has been written off politically on several occasions, only to bounce back.
He’s “never had it easy”, said political scientist Paloma Roman from Madrid’s Complutense University, noting his “flair” for getting out of complicated situations.
Electoral setbacks
Mr. Sanchez emerged from obscurity in 2014 as a little-known MP to seize the reins of Spain’s oldest political party.
A leap-year baby born in Madrid on February 29, 1972, he grew up in a well-off family, the son of an entrepreneur father and civil servant mother.
He studied economics before obtaining a master’s degree in political economy at the Free University of Brussels and a doctorate from a private Spanish university.
Elected to the Socialist leadership in 2014, Mr. Sanchez’s future was quickly put in doubt after he led the party to its worst-ever electoral defeats in 2015 and 2016.
Ejected from the leadership, he unexpectedly won his job back in a primary in May 2017 after a cross-country campaign in his 2005 Peugeot to rally support.
Within barely a year, the father of two teenage girls took over as premier in June 2018 after an ambitious gamble that saw him topple conservative Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote.
Always immaculately dressed, the telegenic politician — who likes running and looms over his rivals at 1.90 metres (6 foot 2 inches) — has earned a reputation as being tenacious to the point of stubbornness.
Catalan amnesty deal
Over the past six years, he has had to play a delicate balancing act to stay in power.
In February 2019, the fragile alliance of left-wing factions and pro-independence Basque and Catalan parties that had catapulted him to the premiership cracked, prompting him to call early elections.
Although his Socialists won, they fell short of an absolute majority, and Mr. Sanchez was unable to secure support to stay in power, so he called a repeat election later that year.
He was then forced into a marriage of convenience with the radical-left Podemos, despite much gnashing of teeth inside his own party.
Deemed politically dead after his party again suffered a drubbing in local and regional elections in May 2023, Mr. Sanchez surprised the country by calling an early general election for July.
While his Socialists finished second, behind the right-wing Popular Party (PP), Mr. Sanchez cobbled together a majority in parliament with the support of the far-left party Sumar and smaller regional parties, including Catalan separatists.
In exchange for their support, Catalonia’s two main separatist parties demanded a controversial amnesty for hundreds of people facing legal action over their roles in the region’s failed push for independence in 2017.
Mr. Sanchez had previously opposed such a move but he agreed to it to remain in power, sparking several mass protests by the right.
