Pressure grows on Pedro Sánchez amid series of corruption claims involving family, party and administration
Tens of thousands of people have attended an anti-government demonstration in Madrid to demand a snap general election as the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, tries to weather a series of corruption allegations involving his family, his party and his administration.
Sunday’s protest, called by Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) under the slogan, “This is it: mafia or democracy?”, was held three days after one of Sánchez’s closest erstwhile allies, the former transport minister José Luis Ábalos, was remanded in custody by a judge investigating an alleged kickbacks-for-contracts scheme.
The PP put attendance at 80,000, while the central government’s delegate to the region estimated that half that many people had turned out for the rally at the Temple of Debod in the centre of the capital.
The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, described the legislature as “absurd” and said it could not be allowed to continue. He added that Ábalos’s detention ahead of trial proved that Sánchez’s style of politics – dubbed sanchismo – was rotten. “Sanchismo is political, economic, institutional, social and moral corruption,” Feijóo told the crowd. “Sanchismo is in prison and it needs to get out of government.”
