Pedro Sánchez is an enduro enthusiast. He likes to overcome natural obstacles with his bike and show endurance and skill on social media. Position, braking, curves, gaze, speed control, and terrain reading. Manuals from chiefs of staff proliferate, but the president is into enduro. Until now. Classic politics was swallowed by polarization, and its track record in management today bears an indelible stain in the final throes of the legislature.
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Not even the corruption cases hovering over the PSOE and its family have damaged the president’s image as much. The five days of “reflection” in April 2024 were a political jolt, but the summer meditations of 2026 constitute a hole in Sánchez’s narrative that cannot be erased with newfound empathy or promises based on future evidence.
The Ceuta crisis is ammunition in the immigration field, which the right fuels to grow at the polls and which leaves the left caught between principles and the unrestrainedness of its voters. The sudden entry of more than 70,000 people into Ceuta can only be the result of a hybrid operation anchored in Morocco that has revealed the seams of the Government and the State itself. The president could claim immediate ignorance, but not after a month of vacation. Nor can he doubt the undeniable: there was Moroccan collaboration on the ground, as certified by the Police report.
From parliamentary solitude, Sánchez entrusts himself to Saint CNI, whom he questioned a month ago. The trust gap with Morocco is ten hours. The future of diplomatic relations now depends on the X-ray of that time window on July 31 in which the Moroccan authorities, at a minimum, refrained. Then there are the toppings: mafias, hoaxes, the reactionary international, Russia, Israel… but the core is Morocco’s role. And while the Government seeks answers, just evaluating the emergency management confirms the socialist unease.
The PP has experience in repelling migrants; it did so at El Tarajal in 2014. A tragedy
Could the “invasion” be repelled by force? The PP has experience on the same beach of El Tarajal in 2014: 56 civil guards, rubber bullets, blank rounds, and smoke grenades. Do not let them in. At any cost. The result, a tragedy. Even Jorge Fernández Díaz, then minister, admitted they should not have fired. Sánchez clings to the milestone of the voluntary return of more than 90% of migrants to Morocco in less than 24 hours, although, a month later, no one can quantify the illegal immigrants remaining in the autonomous city. The rain of millions is not seen on the streets. Sumar distances itself from the PSOE and asks to send minors to the peninsula; the PP barons refuse to host them with one hand while patting their partner in Ceuta with the other, and even the Generalitat, a loyal ally, sets conditions.
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The army guards supermarkets and school doors. Economic aid has a schedule: one more month. The PSOE is suffocating. Juan Jesús Vivas emerges as a sensible titan amid the feeling of abandonment in the autonomous city and the Ceutans, as heroes against the pilgrimage of ultra scavengers.
Not even the excesses of the right still serve as a bond for the investiture partners
Blame is sought within the Government. The struggle between the Interior and Defense ministers had become chronic. Now, Margarita Robles practically declares herself in rebellion. She prioritizes defending her agents on the ground and shows in Congress her detachment from a political narrative that was born lame. The minister may have lost Sánchez’s favor to Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who sacrifices himself by putting in writing the lack of control over the Police. Admitting in writing, perhaps with an eye on a judicial case, that he cannot “exercise his ministerial responsibility” without the information the Police provide to the National Court and reiterating it before the president of the Judiciary only certifies defeat before public opinion.
Not even the excesses of the right, which only wait to see the president before a court, still serve as a bond for the investiture partners. A ten-hour hole in Morocco, a month of vacation in the Canary Islands, and a crisis to resolve in Ceuta. Nothing was on the roadmap to the polls. Sánchez needs a victory. Will it be financing? Another hole.
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