The First 100 Hours...

Pedro Sánchez has done it – he has somehow climbed from the abyss of de-selection just eighteen months ago, to a party with just 20% approval only last week and now to the very top of Spanish politics, leaving – notably – Susana Díaz, Mariano Rajoy and Albert Rivera to lick their wounds as they consider their own ‘what ifs’ and mistakes in the Game of Thrones. On Saturday, Pedro Sánchez became the prime minister of Spain.

His enemies are everywhere – with the Partido Popular passing around a press-kit to editors and commentators, including the charge of a ‘Frankenstein Government’, due to the make-up of his support (180 deputies from the PSOE, Union Podemos, ERC, PDCat, PNV, Bildum and Nueva Canarias – all with their own agendas). The PSOE itself, indeed, has fifty less deputies than the PP, the leading opposition party.

The debate and vote went through smoothly enough last Thursday and Friday, and Mariano Rajoy – perhaps oddly – refused to resign his post, preferring to go down in flames instead (probably due in part to future cases of corruption on the books).  The Senado however, is unaffected and remains in PP hands. What could they do there to salvage their loss (even at the cost of Spain’s reputation and the Spanish people)? Perhaps start by voting down the very national budget that they, as a government, had approved just a week ago.

Pedro Sánchez was born in Madrid in 1972, speaks excellent English and French (here he is speaking against Brexit), he’s a committed atheist and he owns an apartment in Mojácar (heh!). His wife is Begoña Gómez (here).

And what of Rajoy? ‘The Former PM Mariano Rajoy and his team await a cushy future. Members of the defeated Popular Party government can return to their civil servant positions, and most also retain their MP status’, says El País in English here. But who will take over from Don Mariano following a slightly surprising resignation as party leader on Tuesday? The two leading choices – Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and María Dolores de Cospedal, are at daggers drawn, says El Diario here. A third possibility is Alberto Núñez Feijóo (here).

As part of the fallout with Sánchez preparing to move to his new home at La Moncloa, the shredders there were hard at work apparently. We were also treated to the news that 1,300 (no doubt rather surprised) advisors of the outgoing government would also be out of a job. 
But, even in Spain, life goes on...