Who wrote the score for Pedro Sánchez?

But in musical art, as in society, the score is followed. It is not the substance that is improvised, but the form. Conductors and conductors have their own mark, but they follow the composition made by others.  

Who has composed the score that Pedro Sánchez is playing? A question that is not easy to answer with certainty. The doubt stems not only from the character's intrinsic contradictions, but also from the inconsistencies, bordering on nonsense, of his own government programme and his international policy.  

The president knew from the moment he formed his first coalition government, which saved parliamentary backing with the support of parties and movements hostile to the unity of Spain and the Constitution, that he had to use his prerogatives to impose, against his partners and supporters, what he considers to be ‘state positions’, such as support for the autonomist solution to the Sahara question, the recognition of the Palestinian state with the consequent anger of Israel, or the multi-million dollar support for Zelenski's Ukrainian war, when the state coffers are half-empty and the deficit exceeds tolerable limits.  

Pedro Sánchez's ways are more akin to those of the tyrants of Syracuse, Hieron II or Agatocles, who with an iron fist raised the radiance of the Sicilian city. But it has a programme, it obeys a script.  

What Pedro Sánchez is doing is unprecedented, neither in his party nor in Spanish governments since the Transition.  

By all indications, his numerous advisors are only concerned with form, not substance. In a hyper-connected planet, in which world power is intertwined with the large multinationals of finance, energy, technology and arms complexes, where does Pedro Sánchez fit in? Because there is one. But which one? 

Does Elon Musk, to whom Pedro Sánchez opens the doors of technology in Spain, and whom the future US president Donald Trump wants to have at his side, have to do with his score? Or should we look to Italy, where the very first Giorgia Meloni invites Sánchez to participate in the economic G-7, leaving the Spanish president unsure how to handle this ‘miura’ to which he hangs the epithet of ‘fascistoid’ for purely electoral reasons ahead of the European elections on 9 June?  

Who of them all is composing Sánchez's score, or is it George Soros, whose hand in hand Pedro Sánchez travelled to the United States to meet with the world's leading financial corporations, with whom no jokes can be made?  

Also in the betting pool is French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom Sánchez signed a Friendship Treaty (was that necessary?). Macron does have his own score, very French, very Eurocentric, with some congenital Gaullism of ‘la grandeur de la France’, into which the young Iberian dauphin could well fit.  

Finally, let us not forget Vladimir Putin, who, like his Eastern counterpart and friend Xi Jinping, has his own universal score. Sánchez is courting them both: the Russian by tripling the purchase of Siberian gas, and the Chinese by meeting with him at his request twice in four months, in November 2022 and March 2023. Are the Putin/Xi duo shadow-managing Sánchez's score? 

Europe is in a process of disarticulation. The upcoming elections will see profound changes. Populist and identity-based movements are soaring in the polls and, if they agree among themselves, could become the leading group in the Strasbourg parliament. What role can, will or will his godfathers assign to Pedro Sánchez?  

The dreams of his advisers to elevate Sánchez as president of the European Council to replace Charles Michel, whose term of office is coming to an end, have been dashed. The Germans are opposed and the French are not in favour.  As for presiding over NATO or the United Nations Secretariat General, it is a meaningless mirage that only exists in the imagination of some Monclovites.  

Another dream of the close friends remained, and that was to organise a new International Peace Conference for the Middle East, an unrealisable goal after the political and diplomatic clash with the Tel Aviv government and Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. A clash to which perhaps Santiago Abascal's abracadabrante trip to Jerusalem and his meeting with the reviled new Israeli Messiah may have contributed to Israel's not retaliating in the security and defence agreements, even though this may be unfortunate for President Sánchez. Moreover, following Chinese President Xi Jinping's declaration of the need for a new international conference to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and his recent visit to France to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Paris-Beijing relations, the indications are that, if Israel agrees to a new world forum, it will be held in France.  

For now, the only real and tangible thing Pedro Sánchez has at his disposal is the presidency of the Socialist International. But is this body really good for anything? 

The unknown leader Sánchez still has an ace up his sleeve, no doubt. The serious issues he faces will not prevent him from fulfilling his mandate, his roadmap, whoever falls.