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The first parliamentary session in Spain since Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s top aide was linked to the corruption scandal on Wednesday. The session soon became a chaotic, with various lawmakers calling on Sanchez to resign so political pressure would hit him.
People’s Party (PP) lawmakers slammed their seats and cried out, “Resignation, resignation!” The scene was coordinated by Santiago Abascal, the leader of the far-right Vox party, who left the room without listening to Sanchez and stared at him with a light empty as he passed.
“You’re vulgar. And even your supporters have no doubts about it. All of Spain knows it. You’re corrupt and you’re a traitor,” Abascal said before leaving the room.
The Spanish Prime Minister chose to deploy an offensive tactic, as he referenced a corruption case linked to other parties. Sanchez spoke about the Gürtel case, which resigned as a PP officer and then resigned from the Gürtel, including bribery, money laundering and tax evasion.
The parliamentary caucus exploded, and the situation quickly became chaotic, with council speaker Francina Allengol struggling to control the session.
“You are a president who is deeply trapped in a corruption scheme. No matter how you disguise yourself, you are not a victim. The victim is a Spanish.”
“You’ve come to say you won’t call the election because you’ll lose them. You don’t need to save the Spaniards from yourself. The Spaniards have to protect themselves from you, and they are waiting for your resignation letter,” he added.
Sanchez then said the only thing he is trying to deal with is a case of PP corruption, which will be tested in the coming months.
Sanchez completely changed his tone, moving from last week’s apology to a coordinated attack on the opposition PP and VOX. Spanish leaders consider it lack justification to talk about corruption, taking into account serious graft cases.
As Sánchez points out, the difference is that the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) acts immediately upon indications, while PP and VOX hide corruption.
Sánchez attempted to pilot the session from the PSOE corruption incident, but to no avail.
The last few days have been extremely nervous since the audio recording was announced by Spanish police last week.
The tape confirmed that Santos Cerdán, the third-highest ranking PSOE official to step down, was involved in an illegal scheme where he saw him receive a kickback in exchange for awarding a public works contract. Serdan denied any misconduct.
Additional sources •AP
