Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has constructed a bubble of performative activity to disguise his government’s paralysis, columnist Julián Cabrera argues.
Cabrera contends that Spain functions on two tracks operating largely independently of the government: the automatic workings of the civil service, and the activity of businesses from major banks down to small firms and self-employed workers. The most interventionist sectors of the government, with the Sumar quota at the forefront, act mainly as an obstacle to both, he writes.
The prime minister, Cabrera argues, inhabits a parallel universe in which he commands much but governs nothing, a condition compounded by the absence of approved budgets and a permanent parliamentary minority.
In response, Sánchez and his inner circle have opted to project a narrative of frenetic executive activity, amplified by sympathetic media. Speeches, events, and staging fill the space that legislation does not, the columnist writes.
Cabrera points to one morning when a harsh sentence against Ábalos and Koldo was handed down. That same day, Sánchez appeared surrounded by eleven ministers at an event themed around a green and digital Spain.
The columnist calls the overall pattern a trompe-l’oeil illusion of governance, set against what he describes as a tsunami of corruption investigations, charges, and convictions bearing down on the Socialist Party.