Pedro Sánchez's green screen has finally collapsed (Agustín Valladolid in Vozpópuli)

Columnist Agustín Valladolid argues in Vozpópuli that Pedro Sánchez's term in office is finished and that no green screen can hide so much incompetence. He points to the Maricarmen case and Ceuta as the final act of a lost term in which the failure of housing policy has been laid bare.

## A term in office widely considered over

Columnist **Agustín Valladolid** published the article "Pedro Sánchez's green screen has finally collapsed" in **Vozpópuli** on 30 September 2026. In it, he argues that the Spanish Prime Minister's term is finished, however much **Pedro Sánchez** tries to stretch it out for as long as it suits him and as long as he can. The term, he writes, was dead before it began, but now there are no idyllic images left to feed the green screen he has lived on — or rather, survived on — over these past years.

According to his analysis, the Maricarmen case has delivered the coup de grâce. Sol is not Ceuta, but in the socialist leader's ever-narrower electoral universe it hurts just as much or more, he claims. The immediate consequence has been to spread, like a vacuum bomb, the failure of the housing policy pursued by a government that calls itself pogre.

Valladolid stresses that Sánchez should not fool himself: he is the one chiefly held responsible for the failure, even if he is not the only one. The belated display of widespread disillusionment among young people points in the same direction.

## Housing and the distribution of resources between generations

The columnist argues that this youth disillusionment is caused by a policy of allocating resources that has benefited "older people, who already absorb **40%** of the budget" and has left hardly any room for policies that benefit the new generations. To back this up, he cites professor **Conde-Ruiz** and his book La juventud atracada (Youth Robbed Blind), published by Península.

In his view, it is striking that nobody tells Podemos or Sumar that, in this debate, their theses — the ones the **PSOE** (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) once bought into and which have caused a sharp squeeze and price surge in the rental market — are incompatible with any remotely realistic remedy.

Nor, according to Valladolid, will the approval of yet another modification of the rules governing the market solve anything. On the contrary, he predicts it will shrink the rental housing stock even further. Meanwhile, the small landlord who does not need the money will keep their flat empty and locked up tight. Self-protection in the face of legal uncertainty. The decrees that have been passed are not a solution; they are just one more political lifeline thrown by a shipwrecked prime minister to himself.

## Ceuta, Maricarmen and the verdict on a lost term

For the columnist, **Ceuta** and Maricarmen are the final act of a lost term in which none of the country's structural problems — pensions, debt, housing — have improved. With not a single budget passed, and with a parliamentary instability that has only allowed minor initiatives to go through by decree, this period will be remembered in the future as one of the bleakest of our democracy, he writes.

Valladolid recalls that across his two terms Sánchez has had various opportunities to lighten the load, change course and return to the political centre. If he has not done so, it has not been out of ideological conviction or even tactical calculation. He could have taken advantage of any of the crises endured — Elbichito, the dana floods, wars, Ceuta — to rebuild consensus and pursue common goals. But it never crossed his mind, because that would have meant ceding shares of power, both inside and outside the **PSOE**.

## The judgement of history and the end of the green screen

The article recalls an episode from **June 2018**: Pedro Sánchez asked himself, in front of a speechless **Maxim Huerta**, what history would say about him. What he surely never imagined is that eight years later a consensus would have solidified around his figure describing him as a minor character, the blend of a ruler with colossal ambition but without the brains to govern a country.

This is finished, Valladolid concludes, even if the show goes on. But there is no green screen left that can hide so much incompetence.