Thousands of protesters tried to reach the Moncloa Palace, headquarters of the Spanish government, to demand the resignation of Pedro Sánchez

The head of the progressive coalition government, leader of his party, the PSOE, is going through the worse of the political storms since he took office in 2018.

Beaten by devastating electoral results in the last regional elections, a former minister in preventive detention and about to be sentenced and another trial against his brother which begins in a few days, the last punch in the pit of the stomach for Sánchez was known this week: the ininvestigation of former socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapaterosuspected of influence peddling and participating in a criminal organization that laundered money.

“March for dignity,” the civil organizations that called it called the protest, which had the support of the Popular Party and Vox.

The demonstration, which was already planned for this Saturday before the investigation against Rodríguez Zapatero broke out, brought together, according to the organizers, about 120 thousand people. For the Government Delegation, however, there were 40 thousand.

With flags of Spain and posters with Sánchez’s face and the inscription “Corrupt” They toured Madrid amid insults to the president – “Pedro Sánchez, son of a bitch!” – and shouts demanding his “resignation.”

“Corruption has a price, no more impunity, elections now” read the banner leading the march in which some well-known figures in Spanish politics participated, such as the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, or the spokesperson for the Popular Party in the Senate, Alicia García.

“There is no one left in Pedro Sánchez’s entourage who is not accused of very serious crimes,” said Abascal, who asked this Saturday “provisional prison” for former president Rodríguez Zapatero.

“The objective is to get Spain out of this swamp of corruption,” said the PP spokesperson in the Senate.

The march began at ten thirty in the morning in the Plaza Colón in Madrid and traveled through the streets of the capital to the Victory Arch, meters from the Moncloa Palace, the seat of government.

The former socialist president, who governed between 2004 and 2011, is the first former head of the government of Spain investigated for possible corruption.

He is accused of being the leader of an international influence peddling scheme that would have earned him and his daughters some two million euros.

Judge José Luis Calama, head of the Central Court of Instruction Number 4 of the National Court, summoned him on June 2 to testify.

Rodríguez Zapatero is suspected of having participated in the alleged diversion of 53 million euros that the Plus Ultra airline received, on loan, as part of the state aid that the Spanish government provided to some companies during the pandemic.

The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating, since 2024, the possible diversion of that money that the airline received as a loan.

The alert came from Switzerland and France, when both countries asked Spain for collaboration to track possible local connections with a money laundering network also linked to Venezuela.

Judge Calama’s order states that this network “acted both in Spain and abroad, maintaining contacts with authorities and economic operators in Venezuela, China, the United Arab Emirates and other countries, with the aim of influencing administrative decisions or facilitating large-scale commercial operations.”

From the investigation it emerges that the airline Plus Ultra paid the consultancy Analysis Relevant for which the former socialist president worked.

The company, created in 2020 by Julio Martínez Martínez, a friend of Rodríguez Zapatero, would have functioned as “achiever” of some benefits for the airline such as, for example, flight routes to Venezuela.

Relevant Analysis, which is registered in Madrid although without employees, paid Rodríguez Zapatero for consulting and advisory tasks that the investigating judge considers that they were fictitious.

The judge requested collaboration from the United States. He wants to investigate the money that those investigated may have deposited outside of Spain.

On Tuesday, the Police searched Rodríguez Zapatero’s office on Ferraz Street in Madrid for four hours, a few steps from the PSOE headquarters.

They found a safe in which there was money, cell phones and agendas.

And a bank account that the former president shares with his wife in which there would be about one and a half million of euros.

Judge Calama requested the blockade of nearly half a million that the account would have received from Relevant Analysis, one of the companies investigated in the plot.

In a video that he sent to the media and that circulated on networks, Rodríguez Zapatero defended himself: “All my public and private activity has always been carried out with absolute respect for the law”, he assured.

“I want to reaffirm with complete force that I have never made any representation to any public administration or the public sector in relation to the rescue of Plus Ultra or to any other administration,” Rodríguez Zapatero stressed.

“I also want to reiterate that I have never had a commercial company, either directly or through third parties, neither in Spain nor outside of Spain, nor have I participated in any operation of this type,” he insisted in the video.

“All collaboration with Justice, all respect for the presumption of innocence and all my support for (former) president Zapatero“said President Sánchez on Wednesday in Congress.

And he rejected any speculation about a possible electoral advance.

“There will be elections in 2027 and, if the Spanish want, we will continue here for four more years to continue moving Spain forward,” was his response to the question of the opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, when he rebuked him from his bench, asking him: “What are you still doing there, staining the presidency of the government of Spain for another day?”