Tezanos and Sánchez's Yes-Men
Sánchez is trying to make Spain's supposedly independent institutions more loyal to his project, which combines socially progressive policies with populist narratives that try discredit the opposition
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"José Félix Tezanos" by Fundación Sistema is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The idea that Spanish Prime Minister (PM) Pedro Sánchez is a left-wing populist (anti-pluralist) rather than a mainstream European social democrat is gaining currency in Spain. However, the observation is rarely discussed by international commentators, with the honourable exception of The Economist. The main reason is easy to understand: much of the politician’s populism flies under the radar for people who only take a vague interest in Spanish politics.
This week’s column will provide English-speaking readers with some evidence, backed by links. To build the case, we will take a close look at José Felix Tezanos, the 78-year-old chairman of Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), the state-backed polling agency. A controversial figure in his home country, few people outside Spain have ever heard of him.
Tezanos gained a doctorate in political science and sociology in the 1970s. He had joined Spain’s Socialist Party earlier in the same decade, in 1973, on the cusp of Spain’s transition to democracy. The centre-left party was later legalised in 1977. Tezanos spent most of his subsequent career as a pollster in the private sector and as an employee of the party that he supports.
In 2018, a shocking corruption scandal shook the government of former PM Mariano Rajoy of the centre-right Popular Party (PP). Sánchez, who was leader of the opposition at the time, decided to move against the conservative leader with a no-confidence vote. The leader of a liberal party that was backing the PP (Albert Rivera) said he would consider switching sides if the vote were used to call snap elections. Sánchez had other ideas. He put together a loose alliance of regionalists and populists, with a view to governing for a few months to strengthen his image before going to the polls.
Sánchez became Spain’s PM on 1 June 2018 following a successful vote of no confidence in Rajoy. One of his first acts was to appoint Tezanos as chair of the CIS at the end of the same month. The PM managed to hold on without a real majority until February 2019 when he called the first of two general elections that year. He has ruled ever since without ever winning a reliable majority in an election.
As head of the CIS, Tezanos has systematically and deliberately over-counted support for the Socialists or its allies in public polls, while under-counting the PP. Don’t take my word for it! You can check for yourself by clicking through to the links that follow. Please note that the CIS website is available in English - you can change language on the top right of the page. It is easy to cross-reference the predictions with the actual results on Wikipedia.
There have been three major elections in Spain so far this year. In April, Bildu (an extreme Basque separatist party that has been a controversial member of Sánchez’s alliance since 2018) came second with 32.1%. The CIS had previously predicted that the allegedly left-wing party would win with 34.2% to 35.1% of the vote.
The Basque elections were followed by the Catalan elections in May. The local branch of the Socialists won with 28.0%. Tezanos’ CIS actually called the result correctly, but inevitably over-stated support for the party. The state pollster said the party would win 29.8% to 33.2%.
The third election so far this year was a vote for 61 Spanish seats in the European parliament. The Socialists came second with 30.2%. Tezanos’ CIS had predicted the party would win with 31.6% to 33.2%.
We can see something similar with the general election last year. Sánchez’s Socialists came second with 31.7%. The CIS had predicted a draw with the party on 31.2%. Its prediction of a draw was based on under-counting the PP’s result. The CIS predicted 31.4% when the centre-right party actually received 33.1%.
Tezanos’ biased and partisan stewardship of the CIS should be problematic to institutionalists, who believe that power always tends to corrupt. The institutions of liberal democracy evolved to protect us from our increasingly corrupt leaders by giving us a lever to remove incumbents from power (a point that underpins my advice to become a floating voter).
At the same time, a market economy is meant to create opportunities for some citizens to create value for others; while a welfare state is meant to protect the population from the ups and downs of the market. Both elements are meant to work together synergistically alongside the institutions of liberal democracy. The approach that I call institutionalism, which supports this combination across a range of ideologies, is based on what we call a fox-like attitude (multiple models of reality).
Sadly, nobody has a monopoly on truth; and reality can be hard to understand in all its complexity. By sharpening our axes, we can improve our connection to the world outside our heads, but cognitive dissonance (an uncomfortable feeling we all experience when faced with contradiction) is an ever-present threat to every worldview - it can make us unwilling to accept difficult-to-digest feedback.
Institutionalists realise that it is better to have two sides with worldviews that are flawed in different ways taking turns in power. Degrading supposedly independent institutions to give one side an advantage undermines the whole point of the system.
By contrast, populists - who see elections as a way of discovering “the will of the people” instead of as a way of removing incumbents from power without violence - tend to be hedgehogs (one simple model of reality). As a populist, Sánchez thinks he represents the true “will of the people.” As a result, he finds it difficult to understand any differences between his personal leadership of the project and the wider party; between his party and his government; and between the government and the state.
Like populists everywhere, Sánchez often struggles to understand the concept of loyal opposition, which involves criticising the government of the day while remaining loyal to the institutions of the state. If you criticise him, aren’t you criticising the will of the people?
Controversial Media Bill
Tezanos’ partisanship helps set the scene for Sánchez’s controversial media bill. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) both passed the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) in March 2024 thanks to votes from the European umbrella parties of the centre left and centre right.. Member states are now expected to pass their own versions.
Sánchez’s government has mostly copied EMFA in its own proposal. However, Article 5, which guarantees independence and pluralism, is notable by its absence - a telling point for those of us who know that populism is defined as anti-pluralism. The Spanish proposal also includes a number of measures which weren’t in EMFA, One of them plans to put an end to digital newspapers that get much of their income from subsidies from regional administrations; and another regulates the way that media organisations have to issue corrections. The proposals also include tough penalties for those who leak confidential information to the media.
Predictably, the opposition PP, which supported EMFA at the European level, has protested bitterly against the Spanish proposal. Also predictably, it has exaggerated a very real risk, with its leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo talking about “censorship.” In this worldview, Sánchez’s democratic backsliding is sold as a de-facto coup; the PM’s populist tendencies are sold as outright dictatorial aspirations; and his policies, which mostly sit on the centre left combined with some opportunistic populist elements, are incorrectly described as being far left.
Back here in the real world, there is no need to exaggerate. Although he remains on the centre left, mostly, Sánchez is also an anti-pluralist hedgehog. He feels deeply disturbed by the existence of online newspapers and hates any opposition whatsoever. Many online papers have broken news about corruption scandals within his party and involving his family, often based on leaks, much to his disgust.
Sánchez took five days off from his official duties to “reflect” on his future in April, only to return with fierce populist attacks on the “pseudo-media” and the “mud-slinging machine.” This set the scene for his regressive media law, which is working its way through parliament. The multiple, overlapping scandals uncovered by the online press have continued to get worse since then.
When it comes to Sánchez’s hostility to independent reporting, don’t take my word for it! A journalist who used to work at a newspaper that backs the Socialists (El País) has shared testimony about being called in person by the PM. The political leader yelled at the journalist to change a headline so that it would become more helpful to “the cause.” Sánchez also said that he would complain to the journalist’s bosses if he didn’t roll over and do as he said. The journalist also said that Sánchez’s media team had regular access to headlines in El País before they were published. This is not how the supposedly independent media is meant to work in a liberal democracy!
Sánchez also has Spain’s independent judges in his sights. One, Juan Carlos Peinado, has been investigating the PM’s wife, Begoña Gómez, for alleged corruption and influence trafficking. The PM and his wife are counter-attacking by suing the judge - a move that public prosecutors have declined to support. As always with Sánchez, the instinct to counter-attack the checks and balances on executive power is deeply unprecedented, even if his partisanship has its roots in the patronage systems that have emerged in Spain since 1978.
For people who grew up elsewhere, it is always strange when there is a change of government in Spain, whether that is at the national level or in the town hall in the smallest village. Almost overnight, many public employees lose their jobs; and the other side gleefully replaces them with its own partisans. At the same time, Spain’s electoral system is based on central lists of candidates. This gives successful party leaders multiple ways of rewarding loyalists with jobs. As a result of this top-down system, true backbench rebellions are as rare as hen’s teeth in Spain.
Sánchez has taken this system and fed it steroids. His administration has a record-breaking 919 official advisors on its payroll. More than half report to the PM and Félix Bolaños, his minister of the presidency, who between them have a bigger advisory team than the whole government did in the 1990s.
We have already discussed how Jordi Pujol, the godfather or Catalan nationalism, systematically packed the region’s institutions with his partisans. Unfortunately, Sánchez appears to be trying to do the same at the national level. For example, he is making former Socialist minister José Luis Escrivá governor of the Bank of Spain in a break with the previous tradition of agreeing a consensus candidate with the opposition. A long-running dispute with the PP over the governing body of the judiciary was locked in stalemate for many years because Sánchez insisted on keeping an old-fashioned system of letting parties pick loyalist judges.
Sadly, few members of the international media have proved very good at covering Sánchez’s increasing flirtation with populist anti-pluralism or his extreme partisanship, let alone the corruption scandals, with the recent exception of The Economist. This is partly because the Spanish version of a US culture war, which pits “progressives” (a tribe that somewhat bizarrely includes peripheral nationalists) against Christian democrats, lies within the blind spot of most journalists.
Most international journalists in Spain (including me) tend to be secular and have socially progressive views. Many of my peers have shown themselves to be susceptible to wild claims about Christian democrats being heirs to fascism, instead of sitting within the mainstream of European politics and deserving a turn in the spotlight when they win elections.
“Hegemony” is the key concept that ties together Sánchez’s partisanship and alleged corruption in Socialist circles along with the media’s blindspot. It is an idea developed by Marxist thinkers to describe a set of ideas that dominate society. The concept is influential with the theorists of Latin American populism. To cut a long story short, Sánchez is trying to create a hegemonic position for a certain suite of ideas (a combination of socially progressive views with populist narratives based on the alleged illegitimacy of the opposition).
Madrid regional leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso (one of Sánchez’s fiercest critics in the PP) has noted that the scandals cover the whole alphabet, from disgraced former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos to former Socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has failed to condemn electoral shenanigans in Venezuela.
Many of the corruption scandals, which involve credible allegations of Venezuela sending gold bars into Spain, fixers carrying suitcases of money into the Socialist headquarters in Madrid and illegal commissions for access to the government, make sense if you see the seediness as a way of funding “the cause.” It is worth noting research showing that populism and corruption tend to go together hand in glove.
A number of Sánchez’s critics have noted that his amnesty law is a case of corruption too as it uses the state for personal gain. He had always denied that an amnesty for the Catalan separatist leaders who led an attempted coup attempt in 2017 would be constitutional… right up until last year’s elections in July. Although the PP won, it lacked a clear route to power. Sánchez saw that he could return to power with the seven votes of Together (Junts), a right-wing Catalan separatist party. Almost overnight, an amnesty went from being unconstitutional to becoming a way of returning order to Catalonia.
The law passed in May thanks to the votes of Junts, whose leaders thought they would benefit from it. However, prosecutors have refused to apply the amnesty across the board, saying that crimes like embezzlement (taking public funds earmarked for other projects and misdirecting them towards the illegal referendum at the heart of the coup attempt, for example) should be exempt.
One extraordinary news story from earlier in the week highlights the government’s mixture of partisanship and populism. Álvaro García Ortiz (a progressive prosecutor who Sánchez named as Attorney General in 2022), was charged with leaking private information. He refused to resign and Bolaños, Sánchez’s minister of the presidency, publicly defended him. His defence - that the leaks were based on factually correct information - rather missed the point.
If and when it comes to trial, the prosecutor handling the case will have to make a case against his or her own boss. All of this is seriously unprecedented and deeply problematic. García Ortiz’s alleged crime? Publicly revealing the private tax affairs of Ayuso’s partner. In other words, he broke the rules to win political points for the party that happens to be in government.
Although Sánchez is making a play for hegemony, his house is built on sand, in my opinion, not least because of his serious lack of political capital throughout his time in power. The sleaze scandals are getting worse and are also beginning to interlock, as investigators find links between scandals that at first seemed to be disconnected. As a result, I think the PM is very unlikely to be able to last in office all the way through to the theoretical end of this parliament in 2027.
There are two significant milestones in the months ahead. One is the Socialist party’s congress from 29th November to 1st December. Sánchez is likely to try and secure his position as party leader even if he loses power in the months and years ahead. He faces only token opposition within the party.
The second milestone involves talks on a 2025 budget, which would probably need to be concluded by the end of the year. Sánchez’s government has passed three budgets so far (for 2021, 2022 and 2023) and has rolled over the previous year’s budget in 2019, 2020 and 2024. In all three cases when the budget talks were successful, the subsequent law was published in late December, either just before or just after Christmas. A budget for 2025 looks very difficult given that Sánchez wants to give Catalonia a special fiscal regime - a proposal that is very unpopular with many of his other allies. Failure to deliver it would anger his Catalan-nationalist allies.
Alert readers of the Spanish press got wind of one possible end game in a recent news report. Sources close to the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Catalan separatist party Junts, which both backed Sánchez’s premiership last year, hinted that they would be unlikely to vote alongside hard-right Spanish nationalist party Vox in a no-confidence vote organised by the PP in protest at the sleaze scandals.
However, the sources said that both parties could encourage Sánchez to organise a confidence vote under Article 112 of the Constitution if he fails to cut a budget deal for next year. If Sánchez’s coalition loses a confidence vote, it would trigger new elections, probably before Easter 2025, which falls in April next year.
The PP won the last election in July 2023, despite falling short of a majority. Since then, it has been riding high in the polls as support for Sánchez has continued to ebb as a result of the corruption scandals. If this scenario plays out, the question on everybody’s lips will be whether PP leader Feijóo can govern without any post-election horse-trading; or with the PNV and other regionalists.
If Feijóo needs the support of Vox to govern, Spain’s culture war will remain very heated indeed in the months and years ahead. The core of Sánchez’s whole schtick is his idea that the PP’s previous attempts to find some common ground with Vox completely disqualifies it from power even if it wins an election, while his own deals with extremists (paid-up communists, defenders of coups and lobbyists for convicted terrorists) are necessary to take Spain forward. It remains to be seen whether the international press will continue to buy this questionable narrative. Will other publications follow in the footsteps of The Economist in taking a critical stance?
The biggest problem with the scenario I am describing here lies in the Socialists’ upcoming party congress. If Sánchez manages to cement his position as party leader even if he loses power, he would maintain the ability to punish any former allies who he sees as betraying the cause. The PNV is in coalition with the Socialists in its home region; and the PP is too weak in the region to keep it in power.
Bringing down Sánchez’s government in Madrid could prove dangerous for the Basque nationalists. However, continuing to support Sánchez as Socialist corruption scandals generate shocking headlines every day carries its own risks. There are no easy options for the PNV.
The comments are closed, as always when I cover populism. If you subscribe, though, you can hit reply to the email. I might not get to it immediately, but I will reply when I get a chance. See you next week!
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
Sánchez is a populist (part one, part two and part three)
Why didn’t Sánchez combine a snap election and a no-confidence vote?
Institutionalism (part one and part two)
Floating voters and the peaceful transition of power
Value creation (part one, part two and part three)
Why is it hard to understand the world outside our heads?
Cognitive dissonance and receptiveness to feedback
Questions of legitimacy (part one and part two)
Pujol’s infiltration of institutions
Nationalism is not progressive
Christian democracy and fascism (part one, part two and part three)
The Catalan coup attempt and Sánchez’s amnesty
The Socialist proposal to give Catalonia a new fiscal regime
Further Reading
What Is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller
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