On the same day that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was in Rome meeting Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, police entered the headquarters of Sánchez’s Socialist Party in Madrid in search of material related to an investigation into corruption. The raid comes amid numerous scandals exposing Spain’s ruling party not as the moral party it portrays itself as — and that the Western left accepts — but as little more than a corrupt mafia, a claim made by opposition parties and increasingly accepted by the public.
The Civil Guard's Central Operational Unit, on the order of National Court judge Santiago Pedraz, on Wednesday went to PSOE headquarters to, as a statement from the court said, “confiscate diverse documentation and electronic archives in an investigation of a ring designed to destabilize judicial processes that were affecting the ruling party.” The Associated Press provides background on the case:
The case started in 2025 when audio recordings appeared in Spanish media of then party member Leire Díez apparently involved in attempts to discredit a member of the Civil Guard’s anti-corruption unit. Further reports linked Díez to alleged attempts to influence the work of state prosecutors. The judge’s probe is targeted on seeing if she received payments to allegedly carry out these efforts.
The Socialist party said she was acting on her own. Diez, who has left the party, has denied wrongdoing.
The judge said that in addition to Díez, he is now also probing the alleged involvement of former Socialist heavyweight Santos Cerdán — who is already under investigation in a separate corruption case — as well as a former member of the regional government of Andalusia, a police officer, a business owner and two lawyers. The judge is investigating them on suspicions of bribery, making false testimony, forging commercial documents, influence peddling, and corruption.
At a press conference in Rome after news broke of the raid, Sánchez displayed the composure of a man all too familiar with dealing with corruption charges. Indeed, when you've already had to deal with your brother standing trial on influence peddling charges and your wife being charged with corruption, it becomes easier to deflect attention away from new allegations against your party, which is exactly what he tried to do. The prime minister, in a statement that was reminiscent of Barack Obama’s goal of “fundamentally transforming” America, said: "We have been in very similar situations before and I think it is very important that the public is aware that the Spanish government is immersed in a transformation agenda that is yielding results."
Related: Revealed: The West’s Most Hostile Leader Toward Israel
It can’t be denied that the Sánchez government has succeeded in transforming Spain, whether by granting amnesty to half a million migrants, overseeing a rise in crime against women, instituting policies that have contributed to increasing housing costs, striking deals with separatist parties, or using anti-Israel rhetoric that makes Jews in the country feel unsafe. An increasing number of Spaniards are expressing frustration with the results of this "transformation agenda" — though whether it's enough to kick the Socialists and Sánchez out won't be known until the next election, and Sánchez has ruled out early elections.
One thing that would be good for the general interest of Spain is fewer people being priced out of the housing market, which is why thousands of frustrated Spaniards protested the country's spiraling housing costs on Sunday in Madrid. The previous day, tens of thousands gathered in Spain’s capital to express their dissatisfaction with Sánchez and his corrupt government.
One man at that rally told LibertadDigital that he was protesting out of concern for his children and grandchildren. He expressed his anger at the ruling government: "They laugh at the Spanish people. They don’t like the Spanish people. Sánchez hates the Spanish people. That’s the reality." He and his wife said they feared Sánchez would become a dictator for life.
Another protester, picking up on that theme, said: "The corruption in this country has reached levels that are absolutely unbearable. When you see what’s happened in Latin America, and this is the story that they lived through years ago. We don’t want Spain to end up like Venezuela, for example.”
Sánchez, of course, was one of the loudest critics of the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela, saying that it violated international law — his most common refrain when discussing U.S. or Israeli action against tyrannies.
There is a former Spanish Socialist prime minister who shares the current one’s troubling bond with the Maduro regime. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the guy who looks like Mr. Bean, was Spain's prime minister from 2004 to 2011. He's also now under investigation by the National Court for alleged influence peddling and other crimes. In an op-ed this week in the Washington Examiner, American-Israeli scholar Jose Lev Alvarez writes that the investigation has exposed Zapatero as Maduro's fixer and that Trump should extradite him:
The inquiry centers on the $61.5 million public bailout of the Venezuela-linked airline Plus Ultra. Court filings and raids on Zapatero’s office and his daughters’ company, Whathefav, allege he helped steer the funds and received roughly $2 million through offshore shell companies. Investigators are also examining alleged links to Venezuelan regime money tied to PDVSA oil schemes and the CLAP food program, whose corruption devastated ordinary Venezuelans. Assistance from U.S. homeland security investigators reportedly proved pivotal in exposing the network.
The fact that Zapatero's rhetoric against Israel is just as hostile as Sánchez's is a good reminder to be wary of Western leaders who traffic in anti-Semitism. It is usually a distraction from their own political struggles and, for Spanish Socialists, from what appears to be corruption on an unimaginable scale.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump, illegal immigration into our great country has virtually stopped. Despite the radical left's lies, new legislation wasn't needed to secure our border, just a new president.
Help us continue to report the truth about the president's border policies and mass deportations. Join PJ Media VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member