In the weeks leading Spain toward 29N, the general election of 29 November, the Socialists never mention the “Manual de resistencia”, the book written in 2019 by Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez with the journalist and former deputy Irene Lozano. It told how S\u00e1nchez, after stepping down as party leader in a clash with a large part of the leadership and setting off in his Peugeot as a middle-class hero to gather support in every corner of the country, won back the PSOE leadership from the ground up and then snatched the government from the hands of the conservative Mariano Rajoy, leading the only motion of no confidence ever to succeed in the history of Spanish democracy.<\/p>\n
The problem is that Jos\u00e9 Luis \u00c1balos and Santos Cerd\u00e1n, co-protagonists of the ride recounted in the Manual<\/em>, have been accused of corruption (\u00c1balos was later sentenced to 24 years in prison, while Cerd\u00e1n awaits trial). Succeeding one another as the PSOE’s organization secretary, \u00c1balos and Cerd\u00e1n were in S\u00e1nchez’s inner circle. And the Manual<\/em> also mentioned in passing the man who would turn out to be the linchpin of that web of favors and dirty money, Koldo Garc\u00eda, a provincial fixer turned power broker.<\/p>\n It is hardly strange, then, that the word “resistance” has vanished from the PSOE’s political vocabulary, since it calls to mind the title of that book and S\u00e1nchez’s lack of caution in choosing his collaborators. But it remains the key word for summing up the Socialist leader’s path, especially in his latest, most turbulent stint in government. And if S\u00e1nchez manages to defy the forecasts again on 29N, a feat that this time looks truly impossible, he will owe it to that formidable capacity to resist which led The Times<\/em> to headline an editorial about him “Don Teflon” (“Teflon Don” was the nickname of the mob boss John Gotti, known for being untouchable).<\/p>\n In the legislature now drawing to a close, the blows raining down on S\u00e1nchez have come thick and fast. Yet each time he seemed to be teetering, he stayed in the saddle. The bombardment began during the talks to form the government, when daily demonstrations were held in Madrid against the amnesty law S\u00e1nchez had promised Catalan independence leaders in exchange for their votes. Then, in 2024, the storm hit his wife, Bego\u00f1a G\u00f3mez, accused of influence peddling by a self-styled far-right union. At that moment S\u00e1nchez seemed, for the first time, to waver: he canceled all his engagements for five days and took a pause to decide whether it was worth carrying on. When he came down from this personal Aventine, he announced he would stay in his post and press on with the work even more determinedly, because a dam had to be built against the “mud machine” and a “democratic regeneration” launched. A few weeks ago, at a rally, after thanking his wife, who has meanwhile been sent to trial on rather flimsy grounds, and telling her “I love you” from the stage, S\u00e1nchez said: “They tried to divide us, but they have united us and made us stronger than ever.” It was in this resistance spirit that S\u00e1nchez also faced the judicial investigations into his brother David, a conductor accused of receiving favoritism. Sentenced to nine years of disqualification from public office, David S\u00e1nchez has appealed.<\/p>\n And so we come to April 2025 and the great apag\u00f3n<\/em>, the gigantic blackout that “switched off” the whole of Spain for a day. The opposition blamed it on an overly casual reliance on renewable energy by a government blinded by its green agenda. Then, closer to the present, came the “Zapatero case.” Last May the former prime minister and elder statesman of the S\u00e1nchez path to socialism came under investigation over alleged dealings with Venezuela, and jewels of great value and ambiguous provenance turned up in his safe. Two months later, in July, more than seventy thousand migrants entered the Spanish exclave of Ceuta by sea within a few hours. As the humanitarian crisis dragged on for weeks, with dozens of bodies pulled from the sea and the beaches turned into camps, criticism rained down on the government’s failings, since it had neither foreseen nor managed to handle the emergency. And, feeding the fire with the most populist arguments, the far right grilled a prime minister whose mass regularizations of immigrants, it claimed, had created a pull effect.<\/p>\n As a basso continuo running beneath one crisis after another, the third S\u00e1nchez government has had a perpetual struggle to find the votes to legislate, because two of its original partners, the radical-left movement Podemos and the center-right Catalan independentists of Junts per Catalunya, have kept walking out of the majority. The last budget law passed dates back to December 2022. But S\u00e1nchez has always held on to his post. Until the eviction of Maricarmen. This 87-year-old Madrid woman, forced out of her home after her rent was multiplied fivefold and dead a few days later, has become the symbol of the rent crisis in the Spanish cities where a great protest has erupted against sky-high property prices. And when the Catalans of Junts got in the way for the umpteenth time, preventing the government from rushing through a housing decree, S\u00e1nchez saw an opening to dissolve Parliament and present himself as the champion against property speculators, against the conservative parties that protect them, against the far right that could come to government for the first time, and against Donald Trump, who would like a more pliable prime minister in the Moncloa. Another face of resistance: not in the sense of indefinite endurance this time, but of a dam against barbarism. S\u00e1nchez thus hopes to reverse, once again, polls that seem to condemn him without appeal.<\/p>\n The writer Camilo Jos\u00e9 Cela, receiving the Pr\u00edncipe de Asturias prize in 1987 (two years later he would also win the Nobel), pronounced: “In Spain, whoever resists wins.” But he did not specify how many times in a row this resistance-victory mechanism can be applied. While waiting to find out, S\u00e1nchez smiles on TV. And on his face, incredibly, there are neither bruises nor scratches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the weeks leading Spain toward 29N, the general election of 29 November, the Socialists never mention the “Manual de resistencia”, the book written in 2019 by Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez with the journalist and former deputy Irene Lozano. 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