Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during the EU summit in Brussels earlier this month. Photo: Virginia Mayo / AP / NTB
Of NTB | 24.04.2024 20:53:08
Crime and justice: Sanchez denies allegations that his wife, Begona Gómez, abused her position for business purposes.
In the letter published on Wednesday evening, Sánchez writes that he will think about whether he wants to continue to be at the forefront of Spanish politics. He says that the accusations are false, but that he is canceling all points on his work schedule until Monday.
– I have to stop and think about it. I have to consider whether it is worth continuing, given the political mudslide that the conservatives and the far right have turned politics into, he writes.
The announcement came after the online newspaper El Confidencial linked Gómez to several companies that have received grants and public contracts from her husband’s government. One of the companies will be Globalia, which, among other things, owns Air Europa.
The airline was threatened with bankruptcy during the corona pandemic, but Prime Minister Sánchez and the Spanish government saved it by injecting just over NOK 5.5 billion.
Sánchez hammered through a controversial amnesty law in March this year to secure the support of two Catalan separatist parties.
The amnesty law was a prerequisite for continued government power for the Socialist Party under Prime Minister Sánchez’s leadership, but was at the same time the most controversial and divisive draft presented to Parliament since Sánchez came to power.
The election results from last July, with a highly unclear situation, forced Sánchez to approach the two Catalan separatist parties, the irreconcilable Junts and the more moderate ERC.
Junts’ leader Carles Puigdemont has been living in exile in Belgium since he escaped to avoid imprisonment.
Earlier on Wednesday, it became known that a court in Madrid has decided that Gómez will be investigated. The investigation was launched on 16 April and is otherwise classified, it says.
The 52-year-old Sánchez has been prime minister since 2018. He managed to assemble a left-wing government in November and began a new four-year term.
The law on impunity for the separatists is intended to put an end to the political crisis that arose with the referendum on secession for Catalonia in 2017, the worst in Spain’s recent history. The decision also means that all previous convictions are nullified.