Pedro Sánchez is not alone in EU in facing ‘harassment through the media and the courts’ aimed at forcing him out of politics Pedro Sánchez may

Surreal claims, lawfare and abuse: toxic politics in Spain reflect the new Europe

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2024-04-30 03:30:01

Pedro Sánchez is not alone in EU in facing ‘harassment through the media and the courts’ aimed at forcing him out of politics

Pedro Sánchez may have decided to stay on as Spanish prime minister, but what made him hesitate – “harassment and bullying” of him and his wife by his political opponents – is unlikely to go away anytime soon, in Spain or elsewhere in Europe.

In an ever more polarised political sphere and on a social media battlefield where reality coexists with the wildest fictions, politicians across the continent have to live – or not – with being targets of surreal accusations, “lawfare” and increasingly ugly abuse.

From Warsaw to The Hague and Helsinki to Madrid, leaders have faced what – in the case of Sánchez – the film director Pedro Almodóvar called “harassment, through the media and the courts, until they are broken emotionally and judicially”.

In an op-ed last week in El Diario, Almodóvar said the strategy had “no relationship with actual politics. It is a technique based on cruelty and personalised psychological torture, complemented by misrepresentation and manipulation.”