Tens of thousands of people gathered in Madrid on Sunday to demand a snap general election as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez faces mounting corruption allegations involving his family, party and administration.
The demonstration, organised by Spain’s conservative People’s Party (PP) under the slogan “This is it: mafia or democracy?”, came just days after former transport minister José Luis Ábalos, once a close ally of Sánchez, was remanded in custody over an alleged kickbacks-for-contracts scheme.
The PP claimed 80,000 people attended the rally at the Temple of Debod in central Madrid, though the government’s regional delegate put the figure at half that number.
PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo told the crowd the current legislature was “absurd” and should not be allowed to continue.
He said Ábalos’s detention proved Sánchez’s political style, dubbed sanchismo, was corrupt. “Sanchismo is political, economic, institutional, social and moral corruption,” he declared. “Sanchismo is in prison and it needs to get out of government.”
Madrid’s regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, went further in her speech, invoking the defunct Basque separatist group Eta. She accused Sánchez of giving support to Basque nationalists who back his government. “Eta is preparing its assault on the Basque Country and on Navarra while it props up Pedro Sánchez,” she said. “There’s no bigger moral corruption and no greater betrayal of Spain than that.” Eta abandoned armed struggle in 2011 and formally dissolved in 2018.
Felix Bolaños, Spain’s minister for the presidency and justice, criticised the PP and far-right Vox party, which did not join the protest, saying they were competing to make the most extreme remarks about the prime minister.
Sánchez, who came to power in 2018 after ousting a corruption-hit PP government through a no-confidence vote, has vowed to remain in office despite the growing number of graft allegations and recent judicial setbacks.
On Monday, Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz resigned after the supreme court found him guilty of leaking confidential information about the tax case of Ayuso’s boyfriend. The conviction has intensified debate over the politicisation of Spain’s judiciary.
Meanwhile, investigations continue into alleged corruption involving Sánchez’s wife and brother. The prime minister has dismissed the claims as politically motivated smears.
Earlier this year, Sánchez ordered the resignation of his close aide Santos Cerdán as the Socialist Party’s organisational secretary after a supreme court judge found “firm evidence” of his possible involvement in kickbacks linked to public contracts for sanitary equipment during the Covid pandemic. Ábalos and his aide Koldo García are also accused of participating in the scheme.
Cerdán, Ábalos and García have all denied wrongdoing and insist they are innocent.
