Spain is in a mess right now. The background to this is a mixture of judicial bullying, corruption, foreign meddling and improper aspiration.
Agenda Pública had several US experts commenting on Spain back in March 2026: ‘Trump’s Oval Office threat to "cut off all trade with Spain" is coercion in plain sight, and it also betrays how stretched he already is on Iran’, said one. ‘Prime Minister Sánchez’s actions are deeply disappointing for those of us in the United States who wish to see a strong U.S.-Spain relationship, including strong military cooperation between our two countries’, said another. ‘There could be other types of actions, such as measures affecting U.S. exports to Spain, investments, or visas, as well as financial matters…’.
‘The White House’, we read elsewhere, ‘through its ambassador, has publicly expressed its "frustration" with the refusal of Pedro Sánchez's government to allow the use of the Rota and Morón military bases for the war against Iran. Furthermore, the ambassador has openly criticized Sánchez for not receiving him in three months, something interpreted as a deliberate snub to the Trump administration’.
By June, this frustration had reached the point where – we suspect – the Americans and their disagreeable friend in the Middle East are now actively trying to remove a thorn in their side, in favour of a sweeter and better colleague in the Moncloa, one able to increase the national expenditure on arms while cutting taxes for the wealthy and – with the insistence of Vox – creating a Jim Crow policy against minorities (including, of course, women).
Sad to say, however, the Spanish electorate have a low opinion of both Trump’s America and Bibi’s Israel.
Late last month, and we return to the US embassy in Madrid, we find the American ambassador Benjamin León receiving in separate meetings both Feijóo and Abascal (and Ayuso in her offices at the Puerta del Sol). What did they have to discuss, asks the leader of the Izquierda Unida? Plots, plans and a new president for Spain? Perhaps.
The worry about American involvement in Spanish domestic affairs brings this headline from El Huff Post: ‘Donald Trump's frustration with Spain and suspicions about US involvement in Zapatero's indictment: "The real political target is Sánchez."’.
The Italian weekly L'Expresso has a leader that warns that "no European leader sleeps soundly" now that "Washington has activated the beacon."
But the plotters need an unarguable scandal. The joke attacks against Sánchez wife and his brother are not going to pull down the Government – maybe the Judiciary can come up with something better. Cynical? Me?
Step aside Begoña, we’ve got Zapatero… The judicial machine got rid of the Sánchez-appointed Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz last November without providing any proof of wrongdoing, while still not bringing the investigation of Ayuso’s boyfriend a year down the line any closer to fruition. The case against Cristobal Montoro goes back to 2016 while the Kitchen Case (the last PP government trying to silence proof of fraud) is being quietly unreported. The Courts block Zapatero’s bank account, but not Montoro’s, or ‘the boyfriend’, or Fernández Díaz… They threaten to take away the passport of the president’s wife (where would she go?). But, we all know what’s really happening.
As someone says, the PP has so far failed to bring down the coalition government and Pedro Sánchez, but it has succeeded in destroying the Spanish justice system and its reputation.
What stops the government from falling, says Gabriel Rufián, is that the alternative is infinitely worse. ‘These people prefer a left-wing thief to an honourable right-wing government’ says the PP spokesman Miguel Tellado.
Forget the polling station, or the 2027 elections, ‘"I will do everything possible to change the government, and when I say everything, I mean everything," says Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
Will he succeed? It’s certainly possible.