Sánchez and the archives: the debate over his U-turns

Sánchez, the archives and the art of changing his mind

Does Pedro Sánchez lie, or does he simply change his mind with a disconcerting ease? The question, which has been circulating for months in forums and conversations, has an answer that is less binary than it seems. The trail of contradictory statements from Spain's prime minister — on amnesty, pardons, budgets or the case affecting those close to him — has built up an archive of past statements that his critics consider damning and his defenders attribute to political evolution. Beneath it all lies a more uncomfortable question: whether voters reward effectiveness over consistency.

The archive as a political weapon

The accumulated material is extensive. Old appearances, interviews and tweets paint a Sánchez who promised to end pardons and then granted them, who rejected amnesty and then pushed it through, who demanded debates and then dodged them. Some argue that this collection of U-turns is not a democratic anomaly, but the symptom of a politician adapting to the board. Against it weighs the argument that adaptation, when so systematic, becomes indistinguishable from a lack of principles.

The discussion has become especially intense around Begoña Gómez, the prime minister's vvife, and the shifting explanations about her professional activities. The government has gone from championing her role to keeping its distance, and that pendulum movement is read by the opposition as proof of opacity. Concrete data on those activities, however, have not been confirmed by any independent body in the available material.

Psychopath, con man or mere pragmatist: the labels of the debate

On the psychological front, opinions run wild. One camp holds that Sánchez fits the profile of a political psychopath: someone who does not believe his own lies because truth is irrelevant to him, and who uses lying as an instrument. Another counters that this label is an abuse of clinical language and that confusing strategy with pathology is a textbook error. The discussion, far from being resolved, gets stuck on definitions.

The label of "con man" has caught on among his critics, who apply it to the script changes about his own vvife or about deals with Catalan separatists. His defenders reply that politics is the art of the possible and that anyone who does not change their mind when circumstances change is incompetent. The problem, some admit, is that the frequency of the changes makes it impossible to know what his real position is.

The electoral cost of lying

The question hovering over the whole affair is whether voters care. Some claim that left-wing voters reward good governance and forgive incoherence, while right-wing voters had already taken the deception for granted. If that thesis were true, it would explain why Sánchez has paid no visible electoral price for his archive of past statements. But it could also be a self-serving reading: the absence of punishment does not equal indifference.

The most optimistic calculation for the government assumes that the amnesty and pardons consolidate a bloc of voters who value stability over ideological purity. The pessimistic scenario starts from the premise that each new U-turn erodes the trust of moderate voters who feel deceived. Neither projection can be verified with the available data, and therein lies much of the interest of the matter.

The anecdote that sums up the problem

There is one detail that illustrates the debate better than any analysis. In one of his recorded appearances, Sánchez referred to his vvife as "Begoña Gómez" instead of "my vvife", a change of wording that critics interpreted as an attempt to depersonalize the relationship to dodge questions. His defenders read it as a gesture of institutional respect. The same phrase, two opposite readings: that is what the archive does.

The final irony is that Sánchez himself built part of his political career on the idea that truth matters. If that banner has worn out, it is not only because of his U-turns, but because of his opponents' inability to offer an alternative narrative that does not depend on the archive. Meanwhile, the question remains unanswered: liar or pragmatist?