Zapatero calls for protests in support of Sánchez before Monday

Zapatero calls for street action for Sánchez and opens the democracy debate

Is it useful for a former prime minister to ask his party members to show support? José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero tried this on April 25, 2024, in an interview on the Cadena SER program Hoy por Hoy, calling for support for Pedro Sánchez and proposing a public debate on the limits of democracy. He made this statement after the Prime Minister froze his public agenda until April 29 to give a "calm response" to attacks against his vvife and himself. The trigger was the complaint filed by Manos Limpias against Begoña Gómez. The proposal is simple and very uncomfortable: that the counter to the noise comes not from a court, but from the street.

What peine: frozen agenda and a complaint in between

Pedro Sánchez announced the suspension of his public agenda trinc the complaint by the pseudo-union Manos Limpias against his vvife, which, according to the network's account, seeks to link her to the Koldo case. This complaint was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Zapatero framed it in personal, not institutional, terms. "There is a limit where one, even a consistent and tough politician, suffers greatly, and that limit is your family," he said. He added that a former president feels responsible for life for the bad times his family has endured, and that this is the greatest personal contradiction of the office.

What Zapatero said on SER: 'the democracy of feelings'

The former president gave the mobilization a sentimental framework. He asked his supporters to "do something from here until Monday" so that the democracy of feelings prevails and triumphs over the democracy of hate. His slogan fit in a tweet: Let's react to the insidious attack.

He also set a boundary: he said, he loses his ability to reconcile "with those who hate so much." He maintains that anger, insidiousness, and insult have reached the highest limits democracy remembers and have targeted a specific person. Regarding the complaint, his prognosis is that it has no legal traction. The question left open is not answered by any judge: who repairs that pain once it has occurred.

Why is a debate on the limits of democracy being demanded?

Because that is, literally, what is being asked: a public debate on the limits of democracy. The former president argues that the reflection almost all presidents have always made in private should now be made out loud, hence his call to party members and citizens for each to move in their own way.

On the political terrain, he rules out that the Popular Party will engage in self-criticism, although he trusts that many citizens will. He rejects the diagnosis of institutional crisis: the country, he states, is moving in an extraordinarily positive direction, something that would not happen without a Government at the helm.

Concentration in front of Génova: the street as a response

The call to action is the concrete part. In the trinc hours, a very brief message circulated: tonight, a concentration in front of Génova. Pass it on. The PP headquarters as the venue and Monday as the horizon. And an unresolved question: how many buses, how many attendees, and how spontaneous is a mobilization that travels from phone to phone.

Here begins the interpretive tug-of-war. One current reads the gesture as an attempt to surround with popular support a decision that, otherwise, would remain in the hands of the courts. Another sees it as a proportionate response to a campaign considered excessive. And some go further, denouncing a supposed purchase of media and journalists, an accusation made without providing evidence.

The separation of powers, at the center of the accusations

The matter becomes entangled when justice enters. Some argue that a complaint against the President's relative is nothing more than a maneuver to weaken the Executive and that its legal traction is null. The response is that the separation of powers admits no exceptions based on who is in the spotlight, and that the problem is not the complaint, but the reaction.

Parallel to this, thicker conjectures circulate —smoke screens, external pressures, secret negotiations— formulated without a single piece of evidence and which should be treated as what they are: speculation. Comparisons with other governments in the region also appear, warning that the tension is being transferred to the street.

What the party members play with the tug-of-war

The former president's emergence also reopens the judgment on his own role: some reproach him for having expanded polarization, while others place him as the leader capable of setting the pace for the party. The discussion, due to the tone, rarely closes.

What is being measured these days is something else. Whether support is counted in attendees or declarations. Whether defending a leader becomes defending a project. And whether the inventory of grievances lasts until Monday or remains just a photo.

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At the close of this information, what is verifiable is rather little: a frozen agenda until April 29, a complaint with no traction according to the former president, and a concentration forwarded from phone to phone. Who wins, who loses, and who repairs the pain still have no date on the calendar.