A puzzling move by a political survivor grips Spain

A wave of political turmoil crashed over Spain on Thursday as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly weighed resigning his post after a judge agreed to investigate his wife over allegations that he and other officials decried as a politically driven smear campaign. The judge’s decision to take up the case — which was brought by a self-described anti-graft group on the basis of online news reports about alleged influence peddling — prompted Sánchez’s supporters to coalesce behind him and public prosecutors to move quickly on Thursday to try to get the case dismissed. Sánchez, whose political survival skills have for years astonished his supporters and detractors alike, wrote in a public letter Wednesday that the accusations against his wife, Begoña Gómez, were false and amounted to harassment. One of the most prominent leftist leaders in Europe, Sánchez has canceled his public schedule while he reflects on his next move. He plans to address the nation on Monday. The trigger for the sudden crisis was the decision by a Spanish judge to entertain a complaint from Clean Hands, a group known for filing cases in court against politicians and other prominent Spaniards. The group filed a complaint accusing Gómez of influence peddling and corruption — citing as potential evidence online news reports that it has acknowledged could contain false information. The judge ordered a preliminary investigation based on those online media reports. Two of the articles allege that in 2020, Gómez signed two letters of recommendation to support a bid for a public contract by a group of companies to which she has personal and professional ties. The articles claim that the main stakeholder of the group designed the master’s program that Gómez ran at Complutense University of Madrid and that the companies supported by Gómez competed with 20 rivals and won three contracts worth more than E10m, or about $10.7m. The complaint by Clean Hands also cited an article in the online media outlet El Confidencial that claimed Ms. Gómez met with representatives of Air Europa, a Spanish airline, in 2020 to sign a confidential agreement in which the airline would pay 40,000 euros a year ($43,000) to the Africa Center she led at a private university. Months later, the airline received more than E400m in bailout funds during the pandemic. The Africa Center denied it had “ever received financial contributions” from Air Europa’s parent company or affiliates. It said the Center signed during Gómez’s tenure in 2020 a sponsorship deal with the airline’s parent company that included four airline tickets to a work event in London, which was “never executed” because of the pandemic. It said Gómez’s 2018 contract specifically prevented the Center from benefiting from her “family position.”<br/>