Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday he was “reflecting” the possibility of his resignation after a court began investigating his wife on suspicion of corruption, Bloomberg reports.
Sánchez, 52, said he was cancelling all public appearances for the next few days to mull over the situation and would announce his decision on April 29. He asked in an open letter posted on X:
“Is all this worth it? Honestly, I don’t know.”
On Wednesday, a Spanish court announced the opening of an investigation into a criminal complaint by a union known for its lawsuits. The investigation will target Sánchez’s wife, Begona Gomez, for alleged influence peddling over past business deals during her time at the university.
Sánchez’s announcement adds to the political uncertainty surrounding his government and the policy paralysis that has dogged him since mid-2023, when the prime minister called snap elections after his party suffered a brutal defeat in local and regional ballots.
Catalonia, the country’s second-largest region, will hold elections on 12 May in which his Socialists will try to win a landslide victory over separatist parties. Earlier this month, the two nationalist parties combined for about 70 per cent of the vote in elections in the wealthy Basque region.
According to Sánchez, the organisation that filed the lawsuit against Begona Gomez is a “far-right” group. The scandal has been widely reported for weeks by a group of news websites, most of which criticise the government. In his letter, Sánchez said the judge would call as witnesses the heads of those websites, who are “clearly right-wing and far-right.”
Sánchez also said opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, who heads the conservative Popular Party, and Santiago Abascal of the far-right Vox party are pursuing a strategy of “persecution and destruction” that has been directed against him for months.
Gomez, who has largely kept a low profile since her husband became prime minister in 2018, has been in the spotlight following reports that she once had a business relationship with the owners of a travel company that received a large aid package from the state during the pandemic.
Feijoo’s PP party has used the Gomez scandal to attack Sánchez, calling on the prime minister and his wife to give official explanations. According to the PP, to avoid a conflict of interest, Sánchez should have recused himself from the cabinet meeting that approved the corporate bailout package. He added:
“I am not naive. I am aware that they are bringing charges against Begona, not because she’s done anything illegal, because they know full well that’s not true, but because she’s my wife.”
