Thousands of supporters of the Socialist Party of Spain (PSOE) rallied in Madrid today to plead with Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez not to resign, which he has announced as a possibility due to an investigation into his wife for influence peddling and corruption.
According to the authorities' estimate, there were 12.500 people at the rally.
Socialist sympathizers and officials of that party gathered in front of the PSOE headquarters shouting: "Pedro, president!", and the banners read: "Spain needs you" and "Pedro, don't surrender".
Sanchez, 52, who has been in power since 2018, suspended his activities and surprised Spain on Wednesday by announcing his resignation as prime minister as a Madrid court announced a preliminary investigation into his wife Begonja Gomez.
"I have to stop and think in order to decide whether to remain at the head of the government," Sanchez wrote on social media.
Some ministers said that Sanchez did not announce it to them.
"I hope that Sanchez will say on Monday that he remains in power," one protester told AFP. She believes that the Sánchez government has taken good measures for women, minorities and the LGBT+ community.
Another protester said that if Sánchez resigns, there is a possibility that the extreme right will take power, which would lead to a decline in freedoms and rights in Spain.
Party leaders had a meeting today to ask Sanchez to stay in power, but it was cut short to join the rally.
"President, stay! Pedro, stay, we're together, we're going, we have to move forward, we have to keep moving forward, Spain can't go back," said Budget Minister María Jesús Montero.
Analysts believe that the way out of the crisis would be a vote of confidence in Sánchez in Parliament, which would show whether the prime minister and his government still have majority support.
Experts have not ruled out the possibility of his resignation, while the right-wing opposition believes that it is an "election tactic" by Sanchez and his "spectacle" to show himself as a victim in order to gain even more support.
On Thursday, the State Prosecutor's Office requested the closure of the corruption investigation against Prime Minister Sanchez's wife, which was launched following a complaint by an association that admitted it was based solely on newspaper articles.
"The public prosecutor requests the annulment of the proceedings initiated by the court in Madrid on April 16 and the dismissal of the case," the public prosecutor told AFP.
As the court sealed the proceedings as "investigative secret", neither the court nor the prosecution gave details regarding the investigation related to alleged acts of corruption and influence peddling.
As the online media "El Confidencial" writes, which revealed the existence of that investigation, the judiciary is particularly interested in the connections between Begonja Gomez, Pedro Sanchez's wife, and the Spanish tourism company "Globalia".
The general director of that company, the owner of the airline "Air Europe", would meet with Begonja Gomez while his company was negotiating with the government on the allocation of state aid in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, Begonja Gomez was the head of the "IE Africa Center", a foundation associated with the Madrid business school "IE Universiti", which, according to "El Confidencial", signed a sponsorship agreement with "Globalia" in 2020.
Pedro Sánchez described the accusations as a "strategy of harassment and demolition" carried out by "media heavily influenced by the right and extreme right" with the support of the conservative opposition.
The request for an investigation was submitted by the "Manos Limpias" (Clean Hands) collective, considered close to the far right, which admitted in a statement on Wednesday evening that it was based solely on "information from the press" and that the "truth" must be determined by the judiciary.
Miguel Bernad, the founder of "Manos Limtias", is the former leader of the small extreme right-wing group "Frente National". He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2021 for extorting money, and then acquitted on appeal due to lack of evidence.
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