Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s governing Socialist Party appeared on track for a fresh defeat in Sunday’s regional election in Castilla y León, with the center-right People’s Party projected to secure the largest share of the vote. The poor showing in the largely rural region follows similar defeats for the socialists in Extremadura in December and Aragón last February. The trend spells trouble for Sánchez ahead of a regional vote in Andalucía this summer and of national elections, which must be held before August 2027. According to exit polling conducted by Sigma Dos for El Mundo, the Socialist Party is projected to lose one to three seats and end up with between 25 and 27 lawmakers in the 81-seat regional parliament — which would be one of its worst electoral results since elections were first held in Castilla y León in 1983. The People’s Party, which governs in Castilla y León, is projected to remain the largest party in the region with between 30 and 32 lawmakers. The conservatives will fall short of securing a governing majority, however, and are expected to attempt to form a coalition with the far-right Vox. For the first time, the ultranationalist group is projected to have secured over 20 percent of the vote and looks set to jump from 13 lawmakers to controlling between 17 and 19 seats in the parliament. Castilla y León’s regional president, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, in 2022 became the first PP leader to form a coalition government with Vox. The partnership lasted just two years, with the far-right group breaking with the conservatives over migration policies. In the lead-up to Sunday’s election, Vox refused to cast itself as a junior partner to Mañueco’s PP, instead campaigning as a party that can truly represent Spain’s conservative voters. In Extremadura and Aragón, where the the center-right similarly won recent regional elections but fell short of a governing majority, negotiations to form coalitions with Vox haven’t yet yielded results. Talks in Castilla y León could also become protracted. Sunday’s election was also a testing ground for the Socialist Party’s messaging. Seizing on the current feud between Sánchez and U.S. President Donald Trump over America’s attack on Iran, and the overwhelming disapproval Spaniards feel for Washington’s ongoing operations in the Middle East, the party sought to make its anti-war stance a cornerstone of the regional campaign. That strategy appears to have failed to spur Castilla y León’s voters to back the Socialists and has done nothing to dampen support for Vox, the only political party to explicitly back Trump and his war on Iran. Despite a notable conflict-related rise in gas and fertilizer prices, rural electors backed the far-right party. While national parties like the PP, the socialists and Vox netted most of the votes in Sunday’s election, several regional parties also secured seats in the parliament. The Leonese People’s Union, Soria Now and For Ávila are projected to make up a bloc of up to seven lawmakers that aim to amplify the voice of historically neglected rural voters who are fed up with conventional parties, but who also reject the far right’s messaging.

In a sign of the bad state of relations between Spain and Israel, Madrid on Wednesday permanently withdrew its ambassador to Tel Aviv. The diplomatic downgrade comes after years of tense exchanges between both governments. Spain has been a leading critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military operations in Gaza and, this month, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez blasted Israel for joining the U.S. in its “illegitimate” attack on Iran. Madrid recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv, veteran diplomat Ana María Salomón Pérez, last September, after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Sánchez’s government of inciting a “pro-Palestinian mob” and banned Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz and Minister of Youth Sira Rego from entering the country. The decision to definitively retire the ambassador is a highly symbolic move that underscores the degradation of ties between the two countries. With the ambassador’s removal, Spain’s diplomatic representation will now be handled by its chargé d’affaires, a lower-ranking official whose status is meant to reflect the downgraded relations. Madrid established diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv in 1986, and the two countries enjoyed good relations until the outbreak of the war in Gaza in 2023. Since then, Sánchez has repeatedly demanded Israel respect international law, while Netanyahu’s government has accused the Spanish prime minister of waging an “anti-Israeli” campaign in a bid to distract the domestic public from corruption scandals at home. Israel recalled its ambassador to Madrid in May 2024, shortly after Spain announced its intention to recognize the state of Palestine.

PARIS — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is no longer the only EU leader confronting U.S. President Donald Trump over the war in Iran. French President Emmanuel Macron is rallying to his side. Both European leaders are being battered in the domestic political arena, but are increasingly outspoken on the international stage in casting the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran as illegal — something that plays well in two countries where Trump is widely disliked. Macron is also throwing his weight behind Sánchez by insisting that Europe must close ranks to defend Spain from Trump’s threats of a trade embargo. The U.S. president on Tuesday threatened to cut trade with Spain over Madrid’s decision to bar the U.S. from using jointly operated military bases for operations against Iran. Macron rang Sánchez on Wednesday to convey his support and to insist that the 27 member countries of the EU should unite in hitting back against Washington if Trump delivers on his trade threat. “The president held a call with President Sánchez to express France’s European solidarity in response to the recent threats of economic coercion that targeted Spain yesterday,” an aide to the French president said after the call.   On Sunday night after the attack on Iran, Macron signed on to a joint statement with Germany and the U.K. — the so-called E3 countries — in which he pledged to “work together with the U.S. and allies” to “take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially by enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.” The trio’s reluctance to condemn Washington’s attack on Tehran contrasted sharply with the critical tone from Sánchez, who denounced the U.S. attack as a “violation of international law” and an “unjustified and dangerous military intervention.”  But on Tuesday evening, Macron shifted more toward Sánchez’s position and delivered a televised address in which he came close to disapproving of U.S. strikes on Iran. “These were conducted outside international law, which we cannot approve of,” he said.   That hardening position on the legality of the war was underscored with Wednesday’s Paris-Madrid call, which a person close to the French president said reflected Macron’s belief that “Europe must be united, that Europe must respond with a single voice when one of its members is attacked, including on trade.”  France is no stranger to Trump’s economic threats. Macron declined to join the Board of Peace scheme to rebuild Gaza, and the U.S. president vowed to impose a 200 percent tariff on French wine and Champagne.   “We’ve been in the same boat,” the same person close to the French president said.  Macron has a complex relationship with Trump, alternating shows of friendship with tough-love and public contradictions of the U.S. president. But in recent months, Macron has adopted a more aggressive stance. Macron has a complex relationship with Trump, alternating shows of friendship with tough-love and public contradictions of the U.S. president. | Evan Vucci – Pool / Getty Images In January, France called on the EU to use the anti-coercion instrument — the so-called trade bazooka — against Washington at the height of trade tensions. And at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he brazenly told an audience that he did not like “bullies,” in a not-so-veiled reference to Trump’s trade threats.   DOMESTIC CONCERNS  The escalating conflict in the Middle East is a welcome distraction for both Sánchez and Macron, as they face bleak political outlooks at home, but can score political points for standing up to a U.S. president.   The Spanish prime minister leads a weak minority government that has not been able to pass a national budget since 2023 and his Socialist Party has recently been weakened by corruption scandals and defeats in regional elections. But the head-on collision with Trump is earning him widespread praise in Spain.  According to a recent poll carried out by the state-run Center for Sociological Research, three-quarters of all Spaniards admitted to having a “very bad” opinion of Trump, and 8 out of 10 considered him as posing a threat to world peace.   Sánchez may be hoping to seize on a popularity “Trump-bump” similar to the one benefiting another center-left EU leader, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen. Her Social Democrats suffered a crushing defeat in municipal elections last year, but since January the prime minister’s party has soared in the polls as a result of her vehement opposition to Trump’s threats to annex Greenland. In France, the global tensions are also giving the French president a new lease on political life as he faces the end of his mandate as a lame-duck president. He has nothing to lose from crossing swords with Trump and polls show his approval ratings have gone up amid some of this year’s international showdowns on trade and security. Resisting the U.S. superpower is an easy move for Macron, who can lean into the Gaullist tradition of seeking independence from Washington. France’s opposition to the Iran strikes will also rekindle memories of Paris’ opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.   Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who (as foreign minister) delivered France’s landmark address rejecting Washington’s march to war in Iraq, now warns, in a post on X, that the war in Iran could end the same way, with years of civil war following the death of a dictator. For Macron, who has warned that the war in Iran has no clear end, the instability gives him yet another opportunity to push for greater European self-reliance and independence from the U.S. On Tuesday, he pitched a coalition to secure the Strait of Hormuz — the waterway and vital energy nexus leading into the Persian Gulf — with European partners, but not with the U.S.  During a speech Wednesday, Sánchez said Madrid’s stance against the war in Iran reflected “the founding principles of the European Union.”   Giorgio Leali contributed to this report.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats would not cow Madrid into supporting the American-Israeli war in Iran. “We are not going to take a position that goes against our values and principles out of fear of reprisals from others,” Sánchez said during a televised address to the nation. Trump on Tuesday threatened to halt trade with Spain after Madrid barred the U.S. from using jointly operated military bases on Spanish soil to attack Iran. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain,” Trump said during a sit-down with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office. “We don’t want anything to do with Spain.” Sánchez said Madrid’s position regarding the conflict in Iran was the same it had adopted with regards to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine or Israel’s war in Gaza. “We say no to the breakdown of international law,” he added. “No to assuming that the world can only solve its problems through conflicts with bombs. No to repeating the mistakes of the past … We say no to war.” The Spanish prime minister compared the U.S. attack on Iran to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which he said had only resulted in misery and increased global instability. Sánchez said that he could not predict the exact consequences of “the fall of the terrible Ayatollah regime in Iran,” but he insisted he was sure “that it will not result in a fairer international order, nor will it result in higher salaries, better public services or a healthier environment.” “What we can see for now is more economic uncertainty, increases in the price of oil and also of gas,” he added. “That’s why we in Spain are against this disaster, because we understand that governments are here to improve people’s lives, to provide solutions to problems, not to worsen people’s lives.”

European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera disputed U.S. President Donald Trump’s ability to carry out his threat to cut commercial ties with Spain, pointing out the EU’s foreign trade is negotiated as a bloc. “It is not possible to engage in [individual] commercial retaliation or business relationships,” Ribera said Wednesday in an interview on Spain’s Cadena Ser radio network. “The trade negotiations of each and every one of the 27 member states of the European Union are the responsibility of the Commission and it is not possible to divide or fragment them.” Trump on Tuesday threatened to halt trade with Spain after Madrid barred the U.S. from using jointly operated military bases on Spanish soil to attack Iran. “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain,” Trump said during a sit-down with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office. “We don’t want anything to do with Spain.” Ribera, Spain’s EU commissioner, on Wednesday said Washington’s attempts to single out individual EU countries is “profoundly disturbing, not only for societies, for peace, for cooperation, but also for the economy, and has immediate consequences in everyone’s economic activity as a whole.” But she she also expressed skepticism regarding Trump’s threat and said, “the American federal government knows” how the EU’s commercial relations are handled and “is not interested in breaking trade relations.” Comparing the latest clash with Spain to the tariffs Trump threatened to level on the U.K., France and Germany during his campaign to acquire Greenland earlier this year, Ribera insisted that the best way to respond to Trump’s “bully tone” was with unity. “It’s important to stay strong and to stand firm.” Asked if she thought that the U.S. and Israel’s attack on Iran was illegal, Ribera declined to answer, saying that as a member of the Commission she had to defer to EU leaders and EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas, who are responsible for coordinating the bloc’s foreign policy. But, she added, “the exercise of force, respect for international law have been the fundamental premises, regardless of whether we like the government of one country or another more or less … Otherwise we could find ourselves with situations that are very difficult to justify that could be used as an argument by others to continue developing this temptation to use force against third parties.” “We have to respect one another, our citizens, our sovereign decisions, our treaties, and Europe,” Ribera said. “And, above all, there must be respect for international law. The entire Charter of the United Nations requires compliance with conditions, requirements and procedures.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wants you to know that rumors of his imminent demise have been greatly exaggerated. For several weeks, right-wing social media accounts have spread a rumor that the socialist leader is being treated for a terminal heart condition. The prime minister — a frequent target of fake news posts — initially ignored the allegations, but finally hit back Thursday with an unusual post on social media. “I don’t suffer from any cardiovascular disease, but even if I did, there wouldn’t be any problem,” Sánchez wrote. “There are millions of people who do suffer from them and lead normal lives thanks to the public services that [right-wing forces] dismantle.” Sánchez’s post came days after a right-wing tabloid published a story alleging Sánchez is being treated for a deadly cardiovascular condition at a public hospital in Madrid. During a plenary session of the Spanish parliament on Wednesday, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, a lawmaker in the center-right People’s Party group, alluded to the article and demanded Justice Minister Félix Bolaños clarify if the prime minister “has a health problem.” In his post on X, Sánchez lamented that after spending years predicting the imminent fall of his successive governments, right-wing forces keen to usher him out of office were now “spreading hoaxes about [his] health.” The prime minister chastised the People’s Party for basing its opposition to his rule on “lies” and said the rumors were nonsense: “This government will be around for a good while longer.”

Members of Spain’s intelligence service participated in the attempted coup that sought to overthrow the country’s fledging democracy in 1981, according to newly declassified documents published Wednesday. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sa´nchez alluded to the enduring mysteries surrounding the affair Monday, when he marked the 45th anniversary of the coup by announcing the declassification of the files in the government’s possession. “Memory cannot be kept under lock and key,” he wrote on X. “Democracies must know their past in order to build a freer future.” According to an internal report — prepared by the Higher Center of Information for Defense, or CESID, the country’s official intelligence agency between 1977 and 2002 — at least six of its officers “either knew about … or planned and carried out operational support” for Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero’s plot to storm the Spanish parliament. Backed by 200 armed Civil Guard officers, Tejero succeeded in taking over the parliamentary hemicycle on Feb. 23, 1981 and holding the entire Spanish government and nearly every member of parliament hostage in a bid to derail the country’s transition to democracy after four decades of authoritarian rule. But the plot was thwarted by then-King Juan Carlos I, who delivered a televised address denouncing the coup and ultimately persuaded the plotters to free the lawmakers and surrender after an 18 hour standoff. According to the declassified report published Wednesday, the agents used CESID transmitters and vehicles to give Tejero logistical support as his troops carried out their invasion of the parliament and later kept the plotters aware of movements outside the building after they took it over. Once the coup was foiled, the agents worked to cover up their participation in the affair by altering records to mislead investigators as to their whereabouts throughout the day of the attempted putsch. While all six of the agents mentioned in the report were subsequently expelled from the intelligence service, only two of them were ever prosecuted for their involvement, and just one — Captain Vicente Gómez Iglesias — was convicted. He was sentenced to six years in prison but was pardoned after serving half that term. FORMER KING NOT IMPLICATED The documents regarding the 1981 coup attempt have been the source of intense speculation in the decades that have elapsed since the failed putsch. Former King Juan Carlos I — who abdicated in 2014 and has been living in self-imposed exile in Abu Dhabi since 2020 — was initially celebrated for the speech that led Tejero’s troops to stand down. But in recent decades historians and researchers have raised doubts as to how the monarch could have been unaware of the planned putsch, which was partially organized by General Alfonso Armada, a longtime friend who had once been his tutor and spent years serving as head of the Royal Household. Historians sought to temper expectations ahead of the publication of the secret files on Wednesday, pointing out that the most sensitive documents were likely destroyed immediately after the coup. “I don’t believe any documents will surface that compromise the position of King Juan Carlos, before, during, and after his reign,” historian Julián Casanova told Cadena Ser. The documents published Wednesday suggest Spain’s ex-king was not implicated in the coup and pressured participants to back down. In a transcript of a call with General Jaime Milans del Bosch, who deployed tanks onto the streets of Valencia in a show of support for the putsch, the monarch ordered the units be recalled and vowed to stand up to all rebellious forces. “Any coup d’état cannot hide behind the King; it is against the King,” he is recorded as saying, adding: “I swear that I will neither abdicate the Crown nor abandon Spain.” Other declassified documents in the trove suggest the theory alleging the monarch backed the coup was originally spread by far-right agitators. “The extreme right wants to implicate the monarchy and destroy it as a democratic institution,” warns a Spanish Communist Party source cited in a memo detailing the national mood several months after the failed putsch. The Royal Household was so worried about these rumors that, in the lead up to the 1982 trial of the plotters, it deployed a representative to meet with Armada and Milans del Bosch and ensure neither mentioned the king in their testimony. According to a declassified CESID memo on the conversations, the aim was “to ensure that the Crown is not damaged by the legal proceedings.” DEATH OF A COUP LEADER Hours after the secret files were published Wednesday, Tejero, the most well-known of the plotters involved in the coup, died at the age of 93. The lieutenant-colonel became the symbol of the failed attempt to overthrow the government just minutes into his takeover of the parliament, when cameras broadcasting the plenary session recorded him firing his pistol at the ceiling of the hemicycle. An ultraconservative who had already been prosecuted for a failed coup attempt in 1978, Tejero was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his failed 1981 putsch. While higher-ranking officials involved in the affair were pardoned within a few years, the Civil Guard official spent 15 years behind bars. Expelled from Spain’s gendarmerie, he sporadically participated in ultranationalist events, including a protest opposing the removal of Francisco Franco’s remains from their monumental tomb in the Valle de los Caídos. In 2023 he filed a legal complaint against Sánchez for alleged crimes of conspiracy and attempted sedition in relation to his contacts with separatist political parties. The courts declined to pursue the matter. Among the declassified documents published Wednesday are transcripts of the telephone conversations between Tejero’s wife, Carmen Díez Pereira, and close friends on the night of the foiled putsch. As it became increasingly clear that the attempted coup was doomed to failure, she is recorded as referring to her husband as a “wretch” and “fool” who had been misled by his superiors. “What a wretch, so much love for his country, giving his all, look how they’ve deceived him,” she complained. “They’re going to abandon him like a cigarette butt on the floor.”

MADRID — Spain’s conservatives hope a trio of impending regional elections will collapse the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the EU’s only remaining heavyweight national leader from the center left. First up this Sunday is the northeastern region of Aragón, dubbed the “Spanish Ohio” thanks to its track record as a barometer of the national mood. The center-right People’s Party (PP) appears to be heading for victory, but a surging far right is likely to make the biggest gains. Aragón will be followed by two more elections in PP-held regions — Castilla y León in March and Andalusia in June. For the conservatives, the goal is to seize on the corruption scandals in the Socialist party, which have severely weakened Sánchez, to confirm the PP’s regional dominance and dial up pressure on the government in Madrid. Speaking to supporters on the campaign trail in the town of Calatayud, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the PP, called on Aragón’s voters “to be the spokespeople of all Spaniards on Sunday at the ballot box.” “Friends, vote to stop the lies, to stop the corruption, to stop the arrogance and to stop the discredit into which national politics has fallen,” he said. Oriol Bartomeus, a political scientist at Barcelona’s Autonomous University, said the key across these regional elections was to build momentum at the national level. “The [PP’s] intention is to convert all these elections into a national story,” he said. “If the PP wins and the Socialists suffer a bad defeat, that will be used to say that Sánchez must step down because his party is in freefall.” PILING ON THE PRESSURE Sánchez’s coalition is already on the ropes following a storm of scandals. Probes into a kickback scheme implicating two former senior Socialists, as well as sexual harassment allegations concerning other figures in the party, have been hogging headlines in recent months. An ongoing investigation into the business dealings of Sánchez’s wife and the upcoming trial of his brother on charges of influence peddling have given the opposition further ammunition. Meanwhile, two January train crashes that killed a combined 47 people and triggered rail chaos in some parts of Spain have added to the government’s woes. A ballot held in the western region of Extremadura in December handed the PP electoral momentum: The party made modest gains while the Socialists lost 10 of their 28 seats. The Aragón election is a snap ballot called by regional president Jorge Azcón amid a parliamentary impasse that followed a decision by the far-right Vox to withdraw support for the conservatives. “Friends, vote to stop the lies, to stop the corruption, to stop the arrogance and to stop the discredit into which national politics has fallen,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo said. | ZIPI/EPA Polls suggest Aragón is heading for a similar result to Extremadura, with the PP clearly ahead and possibly making slight gains. The Socialists, meanwhile, are left hoping to avoid their worst-ever result in the region. Polls have the PP on track to win about 28 seats in the 67-seat assembly, with Vox taking 12 to 14 and the Socialists 17 or 18. In every general election since the country’s return to democracy in 1977, the winning party in Aragón has been the national overall victor, earning it the “Spanish Ohio” nickname — although analysts say its capital Zaragoza and the province that surrounds it currently provide a more reliable measure of the national vote. With a surface area slightly greater than that of Switzerland, the region borders Catalonia to the east and France to the north, encompassing vast rural areas. But it has also developed a reputation as a technological hub, and Zaragoza is Spain’s fifth-largest city. WARNINGS ABOUT VOX The Socialists have also given the election a national dimension by deploying the former minister of education, training and sport, Pilar Alegría, as their candidate. The warning from the Socialists is that Vox — which triggered the regional election in a clash with the PP over the acceptance of unaccompanied migrant children — could still ultimately agree to form a majority with the PP after extracting concessions. The Aragón election is a snap ballot called by regional president Jorge Azcón amid a parliamentary impasse that followed a decision by the far-right Vox to withdraw support for the conservatives. | Chema Moya/EPA Prime Minister Sánchez has campaigned alongside Alegría, urging voters to mobilize against the prospect of a consolidated PP-Vox majority, which he casts as part of an international radical right-wing tide. “The question we have to ask ourselves here in Aragón is: What you don’t want for the rest of the world, do you want that for Europe, for Spain and for Aragón?” the prime minister said at a campaign rally in the city of Teruel. He condemned the “misogyny and hate” of Vox, which he warned could form part of a coalition with the PP if they secured a majority. Tomás Guitarte, the leading candidate for Aragón Exists, which seeks to represent voters in rural areas, said such debates have distracted from more pressing concerns. “Sixty percent of the population of Aragón lives in two percent of its territory, while the rest are suffering serious problems related to depopulation,” he told POLITICO.  “They should be talking about this but instead the national leaders come here and turn the campaign into a national debate, focused on what concerns them in Madrid more than the real concerns of Aragón,” he said. Guitarte also pointed to housing as a serious concern for voters. Describing itself as cutting across party lines, Aragón Existe presents itself as a potential coalition partner for the PP, which is unlikely to secure an outright majority. However, Vox is likely to be the PP’s only viable partner and the one set to make the most substantial gains. The national conservative party has been courting the region’s farming sector with attacks on EU agricultural policy while condemning the central government’s willingness to welcome migrants. Polls show Vox could come close to doubling its seven seats, echoing its strong performance in national polls. The Socialists have also given the election a national dimension by deploying the former minister of education, training and sport, Pilar Alegría, as their candidate. | Mariscal/EPA Bartomeus said the PP was struggling to fend off the electoral threat posed by Vox, which divides the right. “The more Vox’s support increases, the worse the PP will perform,” he said. “The PP doesn’t go up substantially because part of its voter base is going to Vox.” Political analysts don’t generally believe the Aragón result alone could force Sánchez to bring forward the general election, scheduled for 2027. But the cumulative effect of defeats there, in Castilla y León and, above all, in the former Socialist stronghold of Andalusia could make it very hard for Sánchez to hang on.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Tuesday his government will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. “Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” Sánchez said during an address to the plenary session of the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.” The proposed ban, which is set to be approved by the country’s Council of Ministers next week, will amend a draft bill currently being debated in the Spanish parliament. Whereas the current version of the legislation seeks to restrict access to social media to users aged 16 and older, the new amendment would expressly prohibit minors from registering on platforms. Spain joins a growing chorus of European countries hardening their approach to restricting kids online. Denmark announced plans for a ban on under-15’s last fall, and the French government is pushing to have a similar ban in place as soon as September. In Portugal, the governing center-right Social Democratic Party on Monday submitted draft legislation that would require under-16’s to obtain parental consent to access social media. Spain’s ban is included in a wider package of measures that Sánchez argued are necessary to “regain control” of the digital space. “Governments must stop turning a blind eye to the toxic content being shared,” he said. That includes a legislative proposal to hold social media executives legally accountable for the illegal content shared on their platforms, with a new tool to track the spread of disinformation, hate speech or child pornography on social networks. It also proposes criminalizing the manipulation of algorithms and amplification of illegal content. “We will investigate platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said, adding that “spreading hate must come at a cost — a legal cost, as well as an economic and ethical cost — that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.” The EU’s Digital Services Act requires platforms to mitigate risks from online content. The European Commission works “hand in hand” with EU countries on protections for kids online and the enforcement of these measures “towards the very large platforms is the responsibility of the Commission,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Tuesday when asked about Sánchez’s announcement. The EU executive in December imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with transparency obligations, and a probe into the platform’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and disinformation is ongoing.

MADRID — A train collision that killed 45 people in southern Spain this month is piling even more political pressure on the struggling, Socialist-led government of Pedro Sánchez. Sánchez is already weaker than at any point during his eight years in power thanks to a string of corruption and sexual harassment scandals that have rocked his party over the past year. Sensing its moment to open another line of attack, the opposition is now seizing on the rail tragedy of Jan. 18 to accuse the government of neglecting vital public services. “It’s a general symptom of the fact that essential public services that depend on the government are not working,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative opposition People’s Party (PP). “It’s proof of their collapse. The state of the railway track reflects the state of the country.” The far-right Vox party also slammed the accident as “criminal incompetence” on the part of the government. Political analysts did not expect the political tussles over the rail disaster would be an immediate breaking point for Sánchez’s government, but noted the subject could harm the Socialists’ chances in regional elections in Aragón in the northeast of Spain in February, and in Castilla y León in the northwest in March. RAILWAY FEARS Trains are a major component of Spain’s logistical and economic infrastructure. Its high-speed network is the second-largest in the world after China, and carried some 40 million passengers over 2024, an increase of 22 percent compared with the previous year. In all, Spain’s rail network carried 549 million passengers in 2024. This month’s crash, near the town of Adamuz, was the country’s worst since 2013. A high-speed train derailed along a straight section of track and collided with an oncoming train. Investigators are focusing on a crack in the welding between an old section of track and a newer one as the potential cause of the derailment, although their probe continues. Crucially, the accident is being linked to broader fragility within the rail system, for which Sánchez’s government has to take some responsibility. Only two days after the Adamuz smash, a trainee driver died on a regional train in Catalonia after a wall collapsed onto the line near Barcelona. Several days of chaos ensued in the northeastern region as drivers demanded safety guarantees before returning to work and technical faults caused further disruption.  Safety precautions have led to temporary speed reductions on a number of high-speed routes across the country, including between Madrid and Barcelona after a crack in the track was discovered. “The challenge is not just to ensure reliable infrastructure, but also to restore Spaniards’ confidence” in the rail system, said El País national daily. POLITICAL IMPACT The sheer number of Sánchez’s allies that have been afflicted by scandals has sparked repeated speculation that his coalition, which no longer commands a stable parliamentary majority, might be about to collapse.  In November, the attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, was removed from office after being found guilty of leaking confidential information in a court case involving the boyfriend of a prominent right-wing politician. A number of Sánchez’s current and former allies are facing corruption probes, and some senior Socialists have been the target of sexual impropriety allegations. In November, the attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, was removed from office. | Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via Getty Images Compounding all this, the rail crisis has now handed critics a different kind of ammunition against the government. “There is now a line of attack against the government which is not directly linked to either its alliances with [Catalan and Basque] pro-independence parties or corruption,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Carlos III University. “It’s the idea that the government is not able to adequately manage public services under its remit.” The opposition zeroed in on that same weakness last year after an energy blackout hit the country for several hours in April. Much of the latest criticism has been aimed at Transport Minister Óscar Puente, who has been the government’s frontman on the Adamuz crash. A divisive figure, nicknamed “Sánchez’s Rottweiler,” he is a natural lightning rod for opposition ire. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, Puente insisted it hadn’t been caused by poor maintenance, obsolete infrastructure or a lack of investment. But the opposition is demanding his resignation, claiming he misled the public by suggesting that the whole line on which the accident occurred had been replaced recently, which was not the case. Government spokesperson Elma Saiz said Puente “has been where he has to be and is still there, giving explanations in search of the truth and always with empathy and accompanying the relatives of victims.” REGIONAL TENSIONS Meanwhile, the rail chaos in Catalonia has revived a longstanding grievance of nationalists there: that the Spanish state has chronically underinvested in their regional network. The Catalan Republican Left (ERC), a parliamentary ally of the government, has also called for Puente to step down. The tensions of recent days bear some similarity to the fallout from the flash floods that killed 237 people in eastern Spain in October 2024. The PP-led local government’s apparent mishandling of that tragedy, under the leadership of Carlos Mazón, then president of Valencia, is believed to have eroded support for the conservatives in the region and hurt them on the national level. Simón said it will only become apparent how damaging the railway problems are for Sánchez when more details of the Adamuz crash investigation emerge. He added he did not expect the prime minister to resign or call an election over it. But with an election looming on Feb. 8 in Aragón, before Castilla y León the following month, the rail system has been thrust onto the campaign trail. Simón said the crisis “could have a negative impact on an electoral level” for Sánchez’s Socialists. “Above all because it’s clear [the central government] is responsible, and over the last three years there have been frequent problems with trains in Spain, and that affects a lot of people,” he said.