Spain's Sánchez digs in after 8 years as PM, but can he survive wave of scandals?

1 June marks exactly eight years since Pedro Sánchez became prime minister of Spain, but with his government and Socialist Party besieged by corruption investigations he is more likely to be plotting his political survival than celebrating. His musician brother, David, has just gone on trial accused of influence peddling. Former Socialist prime minister and close Sánchez ally José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been named in an investigation into alleged money laundering. And police have raided the Socialist headquarters in Madrid as part of a probe into allegations of a dirty tricks campaign that the opposition has dubbed "the Socialists' Watergate". These probes and others have generated a growing clamour by the opposition for Sánchez's resignation and speculation that his government might soon collapse. "The accumulation of cases makes clear that these are not isolated episodes or the fruit of dark conspiracies," warned centre-left newspaper El País, traditionally sympathetic to the Socialist Party. "The investigations are linked to the nucleus of power which has governed for the past eight years." The Socialist Party has been under scrutiny since 2023, when José Luis Ábalos, a for