Mariano Rajoy witnessed two political funerals of Pedro Sánchez before he snatched the Government in the motion of censure of June 2018, after the judgment of the Gürtel case. The first was on October 1, 2016, when Sánchez resigned as secretary general of the PSOE when he found that he did not have the support of the party in his decision to prevent the investiture of the leader of the PP, who had been 10 months with a government in office in the absence of majorities in Congress. The second, at the end of that same October, when he renounced his act of deputy and announced: "From Monday I take my car to travel again all corners of Spain to listen to those who have not been heard. To the militants." Those were the first orders of Sánchez, an economist born in leap year, 1972, affiliated to the party of the fist and the rose since 1993, and who was going to specialize in a very specific area of politics: survival.
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Pedro Sánchez resigns as secretary general of the PSOE
Pedro Sánchez, after the press conference in which he announced his resignation at the head of the PSOE, in 2016.Photo: Claudio Álvarez
May 2017: primaries against the apparatus
He was 45 years old and the PSOE apparatus was against him, but in May 2017, eight months after his resignation, Pedro Sánchez beat the favorite in the party's primaries, Susana Díaz, with more than 50% of the votes. "Tomorrow it all begins," he promised. In Manual de resistencia, the book —half memoirs, half reckoning— that he published in 2019, Sánchez assures that there were days when he thought about "leaving everything"; that "from the beginning" he had had the feeling of being "an intruder" in his own party, that they did not take him seriously. But he sensed that the bases were far from the dome, that they did not accept the investiture of Rajoy, and, at that moment, he was right. A year after the primaries, in June 2018, he became president of the Government after the motion of censure against the then leader of the PP, who left politics four days later. In that duel of resisters, Sánchez also prevailed.
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PSOE primaries: reactions of the candidates to the result | Spain
Pedro Sánchez celebrates the victory in the PSOE primaries. Photo: Claudio Álvarez
April 2019: early elections after the photo of Colón
He had barely been governing for eight months when, in a risky move, similar to Monday's, Pedro Sánchez called early elections for April 28, 2019, which meant campaigning in the middle of Holy Week – now it will be in the middle of summer. The PSOE had just lost one of its main fiefdoms, the Junta de Andalucía, where the PP managed to govern with Ciudadanos and Vox broke in with 12 of the 109 deputies; the Government had not managed to move forward with the General State Budget due to the rejection of the independence forces, and a few days before the famous photo of Colón had been produced, in which the then leaders of the PP and Ciudadanos, Pablo Casado and Albert Rivera, had joined the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, in a front against Sánchez that brought together tens of thousands of people in the Madrid square.
"Sanchez's time is up. Today begins the reconquest, "proclaimed Casado, the first president of the PP elected in primaries, who would fall overthrown by his own party just three years later. But the socialist leader won that all-or-nothing bet again: the PSOE won the April elections, with two million votes more than in 2016, and the PP obtained the worst result in its history: 66 deputies. "We have shown the world," Sánchez said then, "that reaction and involution can be won."
November 2019: the first failed bet
Pedro Sánchez and Pablo Iglesias embraced after announcing their agreement to govern in coalition in November 2019. ANDREA COMAS
The PSOE had clearly won the April elections with 123 deputies, but was 52 short of an absolute majority. Stormy negotiations with Podemos, including Sanchez's famous phrase that he could not sleep peacefully with members of Pablo Iglesias' ruling party, dragged on for months and eventually led to a repeat election in November. The Socialists had hoped to obtain a larger majority that would unblock Spanish politics, but this time the order failed: the PSOE lost three seats, the PP went from 66 to 88 and Vox became the third parliamentary force, with 52. After the previous months of fruitless negotiations, Sánchez and Iglesias signed in just 48 hours an agreement to govern in coalition, just what the socialist leader had tried to avoid with the electoral repetition.
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Pedro Sánchez (PSOE): "We will have a progressive government yes or yes"
Pedro Sánchez, his wife, Begoña Gómez (right), and Carmen Calvo (l) celebrated the election results on November 10, 2019 in Madrid. Photo: JUANJO MARTÍN (EFE)
May 2023: the penultimate challenge
The President of the Government decided to follow from La Moncloa and not at the headquarters of the PSOE the results of the regional and municipal elections on Sunday, 28-M. While the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, appeared exultant on the balcony of the headquarters of Genoa to celebrate the electoral turnaround and announce the change of political cycle, Sánchez took refuge in the palace. But, just a few hours after the debacle, the socialist leader has once again changed the pace of his competitors with a new and very risky all-or-nothing bet: the electoral advance of the general elections to July 23. From the outset, the move cancels the refrain of the PP, which had been ensuring for months that Sánchez had entrenched himself in La Moncloa, and overshadows the spectacular triumph of the popular in the regional and municipal, which become rigorous yesterday. In addition, it forces the demobilized left-wing electorate to decide, after the victory of the combo of the right, the traditional (PP) and the ultra (Vox), if it will allow the wave of change in autonomies and municipalities to also reach La Moncloa. Sanchez launches his penultimate ordago by getting into a pool apparently with little water. The author of Manual of resistance swims against the current again.
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The full statement of Sánchez to announce the advance of the elections
Pedro Sánchez, during his statement on Monday at La Moncloa.
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