Category Archives: Mariano Rajoy

​Twin corruption trials cast a shadow over Spain’s main parties ahead of key elections

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With former ministers and party heavyweights ​b​eing dragged into court, the country is once again confronting the unresolved legacy of political ​g​raft and ​shady backroom deals

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Easter will not have been a particularly celebratory time for Spain’s two biggest political parties. In a quirk of judicial fate, both the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) and the conservative People’s party (PP) are bracing themselves after two high-profile trials involving former senior figures from each party began in Madrid this week.

Though vastly different, both cases have the potential to seriously dent each party’s claims of having zero-tolerance for corruption as voters in Andalucía, Spain’s most populous autonomous community, prepare for next month’s regional election. That will be followed by a general election next year.

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Pedro Sánchez is back … now Spain’s PM must make his daring gamble pay off

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The socialist leader’s pact with separatist activists has returned him to power for now, but it’s a strategy fraught with political uncertainty

At the end of an investiture debate that had been fraught, savage and bizarre, even by recent standards, the defeated leader of Spain’s conservative opposition offered his triumphant socialist rival a handshake. It was not accompanied by his warmest wishes.

“This was a mistake,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the People’s party (PP), as he pressed the flesh with a smiling Pedro Sánchez on Thursday. “And you’re responsible for what you’ve just done.”

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Spain to overhaul sedition law used to jail Catalan independence leaders

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Socialist-led coalition to rename offence ‘aggravated public disorder’ and reduce maximum sentence to five years

Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government has announced plans to overhaul the archaic sedition law that was used to prosecute the Catalan leaders who tried to secede from the rest of the country after the illegal and unilateral referendum held five years ago.

Under the Spanish penal code, the offence of sedition – which dates back to 1822 – is defined as “rising up publicly and tumultuously to prevent, through force or beyond legal means, the application of the law”. It carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.

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How the far right gained a foothold in Spain

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With Vox’s vote rocketing, the election has seen the end of Spanish exceptionalism – and Catalonia was the catalyst

Spanish exceptionalism – the country’s supposed immunity to the far-right parties that have seeped into mainstream European politics – has finally succumbed to the wounds it received last December.

Four months after picking up 12 seats in the Andalucían regional election, the upstart Vox party led by Santiago Abascal is to enter the national parliament, winning 24 seats in the congress of deputies and taking 10% of the vote.

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Spain heads into election unknown as Sánchez runs out of road

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Political landscape fragmented amid Catalan secession crisis and re-emergence of far-right

Spain is heading into what could be months of political uncertainty after its Socialist prime minister called a snap general election for April – the country’s third in less than four years – against the backdrop of a continuing Catalan secession crisis.

It was always improbable that Pedro Sánchez, whose administration will be the shortest in Spain’s modern democratic history, would last long. He came to power in June only because his predecessor, the conservative Mariano Rajoy, lost a no-confidence vote after a string of corruption revelations about his People’s Party (PP).

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