2,355 days of political roller coaster

If Sánchez managed to exhaust the current legislature to the legal limit, that is, until June 2027, as he announces every day, he would exceed 3,000 days and surpass Zapatero and Aznar in terms of term of office.

In 2,355 days in Moncloa, Sánchez showed his ability to adapt to circumstances, to adjust his pace to unforeseen events and to give in without flinching to reach an agreement, even if it is at the cost of rectifying what he has categorically described shortly before as a red line that will never be crossed.

For a member of his team, “He is the one who knows how to read reality best and has the intuition to act courageously and without prejudice to face problems.

For detractors, it comes down to facts like maintaining as his last campaign message in 2019, being already in Moncloa, that he would bring Carles Puigdemont to Spain to be tried and then agree with the former president of the Generalitat on his amnesty to guarantee the investiture.

That is to say, being flexible enough to adapt to all curves and survive in an era where there are no longer absolute majorities and where it is necessary to constantly agree with different parties that sometimes have different positions between them. “Resistance Manual” Sánchez himself described it correctly in his autobiography written by Irene Lozano.

Or “making a virtue of necessity,” according to the expression he used to justify the amnesty law. Your limits last as long as your need lasts.

He lives on the edge from Moncloa, on a roller coaster of events. He had to deal with a global pandemic that killed thousands and paralyzed the country; faced the eruption of a volcano which devastated part of the island of La Palma; experienced the war in Ukraine and its serious consequences on the economy and the energy market; managed the consequences of the Middle East conflict that shocked the world; It has experienced unprecedented phenomena such as the colossal snowfall of Filomena in Madrid and is now facing the biggest natural disaster of the century, that of DANA which flooded eastern Spain.

All of this has happened since June 2, 2018, in a succession of events that would already be too many for a season of a television series, one considered to have a fast pace of action.

He can at least say that he was the only president of a democratic government to have did not have to face terrorismof any origin or sign whatsoever. Yes, it has experienced two wars in the world and it is the one that has sent the most weapons and materials to a competitor (Ukraine) in an armed conflict.

Sánchez clearly stands out from the rest of the presidents of the democratic government, by the way he arrived at Moncloa, by the way he maintained himself and by the number of red lines and stereotypes he broke.

Censorship of Rajoy

He is the first president of the government to take office following a motion of censure. He presented it in 2018 against Mariano Rajoy in response to a court decision condemning the PP for corruption.

He is the first president of a coalition government. Between June 2018 and January 2020 he governed alone, but then formed a coalition with Unidas Podemos and since 2023 with Sumar. He had previously reached an agreement with Ciudadanos that could not be ratified during an inauguration and he has repeatedly affirmed that he would never govern with the Podemos led by Pablo Iglesias.

The president with the largest government: with 22 ministers and up to four vice-presidents. The one who appointed the most women to his executive.

He is the president of the government who He governed with fewer seats from his party in Congress. In 2018, the PSOE had only 85 seats, the worst historical result for this party; In 2019 he formed a government with 120 seats and in 2023 he obtained it with 121.

It is the only one that has governed in constitutional Spain without being the party with the most votes, since in the 2023 general elections the PP overtook it by 16 seats (121 against 137), but Alberto Núñez Feijóo n failed to form a sufficient party. alternative majority to which the PSOE presented with the left, the separatists and the nationalists.

He is also president of the socialist government which has the least territorial power. Concretely, during the regional elections of 2023, the PSOE only maintained Castile-La Mancha, Navarre and Asturias. A year later, he also won the Generalitat of Catalonia.

Of course, he is the socialist president who faces the least opposition within the party. Even Felipe González, with his hegemonic absolute majorities, has not managed to have such a free hand to make the PSOE revolve around his interests. This applies to the pacts with the separatists that the Federal Committee rejected years ago, as well as the amnesty law and the agreement for Catalonia that all the leaders of the party (including himself ) had categorically rejected almost until the day before its acceptance.

He is the only president to have responded to two motions of censure, even if they were as doomed and bizarre as that of Santiago Abascal and the one directed by Ramón Tamames.

Sánchez is also the first president of the government to be and remain with left-wing voices abertzalenow called EH-Bildu. In fact, it promotes a policy of including this sector in democratic political life. of Basque politics, after more than a decade without ETA terrorism. In fact, he is the only government president without attacks.

In addition, he is the only one to have appointed his Minister of Justice (Dolores Delgado) Attorney General of the State; to his Minister of Justice (Juan Carlos Campo) magistrate of the Constitutional Court and his minister José Luis Escrivá governor of the Bank of Spain.

He is also the only president of the constitutional government of Spain (and perhaps the whole world) to have isolated himself for five days in Moncloa to consider his resignation due to what he considers to be judicial harassment and media. The first to subsequently launch a campaign against what he calls “the mud machine” and the “pseudomedia”in addition to facing judges and courts. The only one that addresses legal reforms on (or against) the media.

Of course, he is the only head of the Executive whose wife (Begoña Gómez) is accused of serious crimes, his brother is under investigation by a judge, who was his right-hand man (Jose Luis Abalos) accused of serious corruption offenses and his public prosecutor (Alvaro Garcia) charged before the Supreme Court and whose official function is registered with the judicial police.

Never before Sánchez had a president of the government negotiated his inauguration with an independence party whose leader had fled outside Spain and, moreover, he had done so with a Salvadoran mediator in meetings from which emerged laws and state reforms.

It is the first that approves an amnesty law which, moreover, was negotiated with the lawyer of the main beneficiary. In his political history, he is also the first president of Spain who, with these risky political decisions, reduced the Catalan independence movement to ruins with a president of the socialist Generalitat, even if it meant rectifying all his previous positions to be invested. as head of government.

This turning point in Catalonia constitutes an important part of the history of his mandate, as well as that of the economy and the way of dealing with the devastating economic and social consequences of the Covid pandemic. “Rajoy’s PP emerged from the crisis with budget cuts, while Sánchez faced the pandemic with a social shield based on European funds that he negotiated in Brussels“, they explain in their team.

In fact, it is recognized that one of his main political assets is having understood how the European Union works and how vital decisions for Spain are taken in Brussels. “His virtue is that he does not go to Brussels just to ask, but that he has been able to collaborate to solve the problems of the EU as a whole,” says one of his supporters.

He is the first president to speak English and the one who best managed the foreign agenda within the framework of domestic policy. He is the only one to have changed his foreign policy to reach an agreement with Morocco against sovereignty of the Sahara.

Sánchez lived these 2,355 days together with two opposition leaders, Pablo Casado And Alberto Nuñez Feijóo. González beats him, who had Manuel Fraga, Antonio Hernández Mancha and José María Aznarwho ended up defeating him. Rajoy had Alfredo Pérez RubalcabaSánchez and a PSOE official.

He is the president who governed with a more fragmented Congress and the only one to coexist with a far-right party that reached 52 seats. In fact, part of his policy was developed with the fear that Vox would come to power, using fear of the far right as glue of the heterogeneous block that supports it.

He was president for three terms: that of his motion of censure from June 2018 to January 2020; this from 2020 to 2023 and it started just a year ago, on November 16, 2023. Aznar, Zapatero and Rajoy only governed for two terms.

In the first, Sánchez had to govern with Rajoy’s budgets and with virtually no possibility of approving laws in Parliament; In the second he approved three budgets and a notable number of laws and in the third difficult agreements are pending to carry out each initiative and he has already exceeded the deadline provided in the Constitution to approve the accounts of the State.

In the previous legislature he approved laws such as euthanasia, “only yes means yes”, the “trans law”, the democratic memory law and labor reform, among others. He removed the body of dictator Franco from the Valley of the Fallen and has so far resisted the promised reform of the Citizen Security Law or “gag law“.

With him in Moncloa, unusual institutional situations were experienced, such as the open criticism of the royal family regarding the visit to the area affected by DANA and well before with the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. And with this, new situations are experienced, such as the use of headphones in Congress so that co-official languages ​​are used.