Los nueve momentos clave de la legislatura de Pedro Sánchez: de la amnistía a la crisis en Ceuta

Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, has officially bid farewell to his final bullet in his political arsenal. After a series of highs and lows, Sánchez has now assumed the mantle of the left-wing while the People's Party (PP) and Vox vilify his image. He aimed to endure until 2027 to silence those who claimed in 2023 that his government would be fleeting, but he rushed to dissolve the general assembly, driven by the social mobilization against the housing crisis.

This is not the first time Sánchez has made a high-stakes decision, yet this one is a life or death situation. His career has been defined by the brink of the impossible, but never has he faced such judicial and political pressure, nor had an outlook as unfavorable as now since he became president. During this legislative period, he witnessed his two secretaries of Organization go to jail – one with a firm conviction – and lost José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as an electoral asset.

Although no one in the PSOE doubts his leadership, the end-of-cycle atmosphere in the party leaves many pondering the day after. With this baggage, and the personal toll of the relentless attack on his family, Sánchez prepares his definitive electoral campaign: if he cannot be president, everyone expects a debate on succession within the PSOE.

Along the way, he has faced three PP presidents (Mariano Rajoy, Pablo Casado, and Alberto Núñez Feijóo), witnessed the emergence and disappearance of leaders of the new political scene (Albert Rivera and Pablo Iglesias), and has a service record marred with many firsts. For the first time, he won a motion of censure, first governed Spain in coalition, and for the first time, he has managed to stay in power for an entire legislature without presenting a budget.

This is the sixth time he has run as a candidate for a PSOE that has shed the burden of the majority of European social-democratic parties and an epic narrative has accompanied him since then. While many saw his boldness when he sealed himself in Ferraz prior to the federal committee's decision to oust him as secretary general, others saw determination as his hallmark.

In crucial moments, he succeeded (the primaries challenge, the motion of censure, or the policy of détente in Catalonia with amnesty included), but he failed in the attempt to repeat the 2019 elections to escape the coalition with Podemos, the party that was almost set to surpass him and that he eventually neutralized. Many feathers have been lost in the battle, but he is a foe feared by both allies and opposition.

Left deputies speak of him as the "dog" due to his continued desire to see him as the Sánchez of the 2023 comeback, the one who electrified socialists a week later in Getafe after a defeat. Now, with housing as the central theme and the model contrast with the right dictating the survival of the progressive coalition, the exception in a majority-right governed Europe and Spain, it remains to be seen how far his forces will go.

Everything now depends on the weeks of this campaign full of uncertainties and dangers, but also on an opportunity that was not available a few months ago. It is this that Sánchez has clutched onto, and it is this that determines his political future.