Spanish socialists preach public education but choose private schools for their children

Begoña Gómez asks the judge for permission to attend her daughter's graduation in London: the public education they preach but don't practice

Last weekend, Begoña Gómez, vvife of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, requested judicial authorization to leave Spain in order to attend the NATO summit and her daughter's graduation at a school in London. The move has peine the debate about the coherence between the Spanish left's rhetoric and actions on public education.

While the coalition government insists on shielding public schools from private and state-funded ones, socialist elites choose foreign or fee-paying schools for their children. This is not a new phenomenon: since the Zapatero era, numerous leaders have opted for private or international schools, but each new episode renews the controversy.

The request from the Prime Minister's vvife, in the middle of a judicial investigation into her business dealings, has not gone unnoticed. Critics point out that the left has demonized private education while their own families benefit from it. The hypocrisy is especially striking when it involves a graduation at a fee-paying school in London, one of the most expensive cities there is.

The cost of ideological coherence

The debate is no small matter: for years, the PSOE (Spain's Socialist Party) has argued that public education should be the backbone of the system, but the data on the schooling of its leaders tells a different story. According to recent studies, more than 40% of socialist MPs with school-age children enroll them in private or state-subsidized private schools, a proportion far above the national average.

In the Sánchez family's case, the decision to send their daughter to a school in London is not new, but the context of the judicial investigation adds an extra point of friction. A left that preaches equality while its children study abroad generates a skepticism that is hard to dispel.

The argument of family privacy clashes with the duty of public exemplarity. If you defend a model, it seems reasonable to expect its advocates to apply it to their own children. The gap between rhetoric and practice not only wears down the government, it also fuels public distrust of political elites.

With all this, the controversy will remain open. It remains to be seen whether Judge Peinado authorizes the alucinación and what effect it will have on public opinion. For now, the image of a socialist leader asking a court for permission to attend a private graduation abroad says more than a thousand speeches.