Thousands rally in Madrid to demand PM resign over corruption allegations | Spain
Tens of thousands of people joined an anti-government demonstration in Madrid to demand early general elections as the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, tries to recover from a series of corruption allegations against his family, party and administration.
Sunday’s protest was sparked by Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP), titled “Is it this: mafia or democracy?” It was held three days after former transport minister José Luis Ábalos, one of Sánchez’s closest allies, was detained by a judge investigating an alleged contract-in-exchange kickback scheme.
While the PP put the attendance at 80,000, the central government’s delegate to the region estimated that half that number attended the rally at the Debod Temple in the center of the capital.
PP’s leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo called the legislature “absurd” and said it could not be allowed to continue. Abalos’ pre-trial arrest, Sánchez’s political style sanschism – was rotten. “sanchismo It is “political, economic, institutional, social and moral corruption,” Feijóo told the crowd.sanchismo “He is in prison and needs to get out of the government.”
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the populist, right-wing PP of the Madrid region, whose boyfriend is on trial on charges of tax evasion and forgery of documents, went further. In a characteristically impassioned speech, he sought to summon the ghost of defunct Basque terror group Eta, which abandoned its armed struggle for independence in 2011 and formally dissolved itself seven years ago, by saying it was aiding Basque nationalists who supported Sánchez’s government.
“Eta is preparing to attack the Basque Country and Navarra while supporting Pedro Sánchez,” he said. “Tell me it’s not true. But there can be no greater moral corruption and no greater betrayal of Spain.”
Felix Bolaños, Spain’s president and justice minister, said the PP and the far-right Vox party, which did not attend Sunday’s demonstration, were essentially the same and were competing to see “who could say the nastiest things about the prime minister.”
Sánchez, who came to power in 2018 after using a vote of no confidence to oust the corruption-plagued government of one of Feijóo’s predecessors, has vowed to continue in office despite mounting corruption allegations against his circle and a recent flurry of judicial coups.
Earlier this week, chief prosecutor Álvaro García Ortiz resigned after being found guilty by the high court of leaking confidential information about Ayuso’s boyfriend’s tax case.
The conviction of Spain’s attorney general has further fueled the debate over the politicization of the judiciary and comes as investigations into corruption allegations involving Sánchez’s wife and brother are ongoing.
Although the prime minister rejected these allegations as politically motivated smears, in June he ordered his right-hand man Santos Cerdán to resign as organizational secretary of the socialist party after a high court judge found “conclusive evidence” of his possible role in taking kickbacks from public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid pandemic. Ábalos and one of his assistants, Koldo García, are also accused of participating in the illegal enterprise.
Cerdán, Ábalos and García deny any wrongdoing and insist they are innocent.
