Pedro Sánchez is not the saviour of the left

Pedro Sánchez is everywhere at the moment. His decision to provide an amnesty to over 500,000 illegal immigrants provoked spats with Elon and fawning global press attention. An interview in the New Statesman and an op-ed in the New York Times have made him a crusader against dark digital reactionary forces the world over. Sadly for progressives, while Sanchez is an adept politician, he can’t save the left.

Sánchez’s immigration amnesty has stolen the headlines. While the Prime Minister presented Spain as in favour of it in his New York Times op-ed, he is unconvincing. Polling following the amnesty announcement shows 55 per cent of people are against the measure. There are some strong demographic reasons for immigration, but during Sanchez’s time in power Spain’s foreign-born population has gone from 12 to 20%, and thanks to recent legislation millions more are entitled to come. Most Spaniards already think immigration is far too high. The amnesty move is not a sign that a pro-immigration equilibrium has been reached but a desperate attempt to boost the economy in the short term while radicalising the right. The Spanish Prime Minister’s international hijinks are motivated by a deeply diminished authority at home.

Spain’s Prime Minister’s global stardom comes as his domestic political position is weaker than ever. “Europe’s leftwing icon”, as the New Statesman termed him, has lost the allies he needed to pass legislation, and while the amnesty stole headlines abroad, the failure to pass a Social Security Bill was what counted in Spain. The entire Sánchez phenomenon works on a status quo which almost seems designed to stir up conservatives. If only people who considered themselves Spanish voted, the country’s glamorous PM would not have spent a day in power. His entire time in office has been due to his co-option of Catalan nationalists and former members of the Basque terrorist group ETA. These separatists are now rebelling chiefly because of his lauded immigration policy and are even asking to have control of migration themselves.

Spain’s population growth has been matched by economic growth, but for most Spaniards this is a mirage. Since 2019, while Spain’s economy has grown by 10.6 per cent, its working population has grown by 12.5 per cent. Spain’s population boom has been unproductive, primarily providing cheap jobs for Latin Americans in the hospitality industry. This is a nation with youth unemployment still above 20 per cent and where housing costs are rising 10 per cent year on year. Further, a government focus on increasing pensions instead of maintaining infrastructure has led to the catastrophic failures which have inundated the country’s train system in recent weeks. This exposed itself in the tragic derailment in Adamuz, which cost 46 lives.

All this is hardly the bedrock of a positive, growth-filled leftwing revival, and I haven’t mentioned corruption. One of the reasons for Sánchez’s inability to pass legislation is that huge corruption scandals involving some of his closest associates have eroded his parliamentary support. They include his former transport minister, Jose Luis Abalos, who spent every penny of his allegedly illicit gains in Madrid’s brothels. A decade ago, Sánchez drove around Spain in a Peugeot to try and regain the leadership of the socialist party; of the four men in the car, the now Prime Minister is the only one who is not in prison or indicted on corruption charges.

The Sánchez model is to eke out a minority government at any cost

Spain’s handsome Prime Minister is a very astute politician and, in terms of purely Machiavellian intrigue, offers a lot of lessons to his counterparts. His strong support of Palestine was the only sensible option in a country with effectively no pro-Israel constituency. Further, he has exploited separatist fear of a Spanish nationalist, Vox-backed government beyond what anyone could have predicted. Nevertheless, his entire political strategy is writing cheques he can’t pay, and when he eventually leaves office his legacy will be a deeply radicalised right-wing inheritance.

The Sánchez model is to eke out a minority government at any cost, sustain it by giving the nation’s rich separatist regions more money at the expense of poorer regions, all the while paying off pensioners with the receipts from huge immigration. If this is what the 21st-century left is reaching for, they must have little left.