Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has threatened to resign following an investigation into his wife

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has announced he may resign after a Spanish court opened an investigation into his wife, pushing the country into uncharted political territory and raising the possibility of another general election.

Sanchez, 52, canceled public appearances over the weekend and said he would consider the situation and announce his decision on Monday, effectively paralyzing Spain’s political system for the next five days. He blamed his problems on the attacks of his right-wing opponents.

“Is it all worth it?” he asked in an open letter published in X. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

If Sánchez decides to step down, it will most likely lead to new elections. It is possible for the prime minister to resign and hand over power, but that would require the support of a majority of lawmakers, which would be highly unlikely in Spain’s politically fragmented parliament.

According to Federico Santi, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, Sanchez could also trigger a vote of confidence as a potential means of strengthening his mandate in parliament.

On Wednesday, a Spanish court announced it was opening an investigation into Sánchez’s wife, Begona Gómez, for alleged influence peddling following a complaint by Manos Limpias, or Clean Hands, a small union of public workers. Manos Limpias says Gomez received services from Air Europa when she worked at the Instituto Empresa business school. The airline was later bailed out by the Sanchez government.

The prime minister says the allegations are a politically motivated smear campaign orchestrated by the far right.

Sanchez’s announcement adds to the political uncertainty surrounding his government and the policy paralysis that has kept him out since mid-2023, when the prime minister called early elections after his party suffered heavy defeats in local and regional elections. The prime minister’s minority coalition is Spain’s weakest government in some 90 years.

Elections in Catalonia

The country is already gearing up for high-stakes elections on May 12 in Catalonia, the second-largest region where Sanchez’s Socialists are trying to win against separatist parties. Earlier this month, in elections in the rich Basque region, two nationalist parties took about 70% of the total vote.

Sanchez “is trying to make himself a victim by talking about collusion between the opposition and the media,” opposition leader Alberto Nunes Feijoo said in a radio interview on Wednesday. Feijoo added that Sánchez is trying to mobilize support for his party ahead of elections in Catalonia and the next European elections in June.

Sanchez has built a career on unexpected comebacks and surprising decisions, many of which he doesn’t even share with his closest associates.

“This attack is unprecedented and so severe and brutal that I have to stop and think with my wife,” Sanchez wrote in his letter. “Many times we forget that politicians are people. And I can say without shame that I am a man who is deeply in love with his wife, who helplessly watches the mud thrown at her day after day.”

Sanchez described the legal proceedings against his wife as part of a wider strategy of “harassment and destruction” against him by the far right.

Spain has a long tradition of keeping the private lives of its leaders’ families out of the public eye.

The letter comes amid political discourse that has grown increasingly aggressive over the past nine years. In 2015, Sánchez sparked a huge controversy when he called Mariano Rajoy, a former prime minister, “obscene” in a debate, a word that would hardly register in the current context – with politicians calling their rivals liars, insulting each other and they even use profanity in public.

The scandal was widely covered for weeks by a group of news websites, most of them critical of the government. In his letter, Sanchez said the judge would call as witnesses the heads of those websites, which are “obviously right-wing and far-right.”

Sánchez specifically accused Feijoo, who heads the conservative Popular Party, and Santiago Abascal of the far-right Vox party of being involved in the alleged harassment.

Feijoo’s party took advantage of the Gomez scandal to attack Sánchez, calling on the prime minister and his wife to give official explanations. To avoid a conflict of interest, Feijoo says Sanchez should have recused himself from a cabinet meeting that approved the corporate rescue package.