MADRID: Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Wednesday he would suspend public duties until next week to decide whether he wants to continue leading the government after a court launched a business corruption probe into his wife’s private dealings.

Sanchez, who last year secured another term for his Socialist party as leader of a minority coalition government, said he would appear before the media on April 29 to announce his decision.

“I need to pause and think,” he wrote in a letter shared on his X account. “I urgently need an answer to the question of whether it is worthwhile (...) whether I should continue to lead the government or renounce this honour.”

The shock announcement came after a court said earlier on Wednesday it was launching a preliminary investigation into whether Sanchez’s wife Begona Gomez committed a crime of influence peddling and corruption in business in her private dealings.

Sanchez said the seriousness of the attacks against him and his wife merited a measured response. He said his wife would cooperate with the investigation and defend her innocence.

The court investigating Gomez did not provide further details as the case is sealed and preliminary, only saying it followed a complaint by anti-graft campaign group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), whose leader has links to the far-right.

Manos Limpias said Gomez used her influence as the wife of the prime minister to allegedly secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course that she ran.

Sanchez also took aim at opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo of the Peoples Party and Santiago Abascal of the far-right Vox party, saying they had “collaborated” with those circulating the claims against his wife.

His ministers came out in support, with Energy Minister Teresa Ribera saying: “We have a first rate prime minister. Neither he nor his family deserve this.”

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2024