I suppose it comes down to this – the country is doing well with Pedro Sánchez. Employment is the highest it has ever been, Spain’s GDP is growing and most observers from abroad put Spain squarely in the forefront. ‘Spain leads Europe with strong growth and connectivity’, ‘Spain leads Europe in outlook for travel experiences’, and tellingly, ‘Why is Spain's economy booming? Thanks to migration’ they are saying approvingly.
But the Opposition wants in. Resign, they cry at every opportunity. The subtext being – let us have a go.
There’s more than 
one argument against letting the Partido Popular take the helm – the first being that they’d need to partner with Vox to obtain a majority, and no, we wouldn’t like that; and secondly – the last time they were in power, their government fell when they lost a motion of confidence for corruption. Quite a few of them still remain in national politics today.
It doesn’t sound good. The Courts and much of the Media might be with them, but we still didn’t know who the mysterious ‘M. Rajoy’ was: one of the many people who accepted sundry payments in ‘black’ from the party treasurer Luis Bárcenas, although the then Interior Minister (the one who came up with the anti-Podemos conspiracies and is also remembered for awarding Nuestra Señora María Santísima del Amor, a plaster virgin, with a gold medal) admitted in March this year that ‘M.Rajoy’ was (Oh the surprise!) Hizzhonor Mariano Rajoy no less.
But that’s all water under the bridge.
Apart from cutting taxes (and thus cutting services), what are the politics of the right? Could they make Spain more successful and wealthier than anything Pedro Sánchez can do? In Spain under the PSOE and its allies, we have seen rises in the minimum wage, rises in pensions, improved social justice and women’s rights, more jobs and better labour practices – and when the Opposition (along with Junts per Catalunya) hopefully drop their resistance – a reduction in the working week.
The money that goes to (or is earned by) the wealthy might end up in a savings or investment account, or perhaps offshore. Or hey, maybe another supermarket (to improve their profits). It’s rare to see the wealthy commit the faux pas of philanthropy, but of course it happens now and again, and most welcome too.
On the other hand, the money that goes to the less better-off will immediately be returned to the economy, finding its eventual way to the owners of the leading supermarkets, banks, warehouses, importers, insurance companies and so on in what might almost be known as the ‘trickle-up effect’.
We wonder – why do the conservative parties do so well with those poorer voters who will clearly reap none of their benefits?
I think a lot of it is down to marketing, lies and manipulation.
José María Aznar – often thought of as Spain’s worst modern president (remember the weapons of destruction in Irak?) – says ‘He that can do something to pull down this government, let him do it (El que pueda hacer, que haga)’.
Many are giving it their best shot.
‘Judge Marchena joins the antagonistic movement against the government. The list of judges openly critical of the government grows as the impartiality of the courts is called into question’ says one editorial.
‘Is Sánchez's Spain a mess? This is how the right constructs the false narrative that only they know how to govern’, we read in another pro-Government paper.
A third one says, ‘The government sees a "clear campaign of siege" against Sánchez from a conservative opposition that believes power belongs to it by right’. Or maybe, divine right.
Then there’s the complicit media – which provides the news (from the top) that one expects and hopes to read. Journalist Ester Palomera writes ‘Manipulators and liars have always existed, but what is worrying today about the existence of unrestrained professional agitators and mis-informers is that they have the support of the PP’.
Furthermore, there is the far-right Manos Limpias with its fake news and press cuttings which has brought about the fruitless year-long siege by Judge Peinado against the wife of Pedro Sánchez, with the apparent aim of attempting to weaken the President’s popularity.
A useful way to check unlikely stories is to go to the fact-checkers Maldita or Newtral (they both have a reputation to maintain, so they don’t publish whoppers).
Far-right news sources include La Razón, OKDiario, El Mundo, El Español, El Debate, ABC and many others. The ‘progressive’ media (El País, El Huff Post, elDiario.es and so on) also has a large number of titles. On the TV, the pro-Government news is on RTVE and, to a lesser degree, LaSexta, while all the others are conservative (Cuatro, Telecinco, TeleMadrid and Canal Sur). Beyond these are even wilder channels like EDATV and the Church’s Canal Trece (lots of cowboy films, prayers and far-right news). Plus any number of YouTube specials...
Congress is fighting back at some of the worst of the extreme youtubers by ‘targeting far-right media agitators accredited to Parliament. The PSOE and its investiture partners propose avoiding violence and disrespect from pseudo-media outlets in the chamber. The Partido Popular has not revealed how it intends to vote, and Vox flatly rejects the reform of the rules’. We read that ‘Incidents of hate, insults, and disrespect have become a decorative element within the Congress of Deputies’. Perhaps more encouraging is a notice that ‘The Supreme Court denounces the attempt to "criminalize the political system" with "unusual and absurd" lawsuits’.
There’s an old song from The Doors with the line ‘they’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers’.
It’s getting tight though...