In the Congress of Deputies, the Prime Minister has rallied behind his predecessor as the right-wing opposition closes ranks of its own and demands he step aside.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has publicly closed ranks with former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero a day after a judge at the National Court (Audiencia Nacional) placed him under formal investigation in the Plus Ultra corruption case.
Speaking in the lower house of parliament on May 20, 2026, Sánchez offered Zapatero “all my support” and insisted the presumption of innocence had to be respected. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) benches applauded.
The line marks the most pointed test yet of how Spain’s governing Left will respond to a probe that, for the first time since the country returned to democracy, has reached a former occupant of the Moncloa Palace.
OPPOSITION DEMANDS A RESIGNATION
The leader of the conservative People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijoo, used the weekly question time to demand Sánchez step aside. He asked the Prime Minister what he was still doing “staining the Presidency of the Government of Spain one more day”. Feijoo reminded the chamber that Judge José Luis Calama, sitting at the Audiencia Nacional, is investigating Zapatero on suspicion of misappropriation, money laundering, influence peddling at home and abroad and membership of a criminal organisation. Calama has summoned the former leader to appear as a suspect on June 2, 2026.
Vox has pressed the case harder. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, has cast the imputation as fresh proof that Sánchez sits atop a wider web of corruption, calling for a motion of no confidence that would force every deputy to take a position. The party has petitioned Calama to confiscate Zapatero’s passport on grounds of flight risk and possible destruction of evidence, while parliamentary spokesman Ignacio Garriga has demanded an early vote.
In the chamber on May 20, 2026, however, Abascal deliberately steered his question to Sánchez around what Vox calls national priority — preferential access for Spanish citizens to public services and housing — and touched on the imputation only in passing: “All Spain knows you are the boss of Ábalos, Koldo, Cerdán and Zapatero’s partner.”
Sánchez ruled out an early ballot, insisting that elections would come in 2027. He rounded on the conservative leader over earlier scandals affecting PP governments and dismissed Abascal as a politician serving foreign-funded interests.
SOCIALISTS HOLD THE LINE
Patxi López, the PSOE’s spokesman in the lower house, has gone furthest among senior Socialists in publicly defending the former prime minister. Speaking to reporters on his way into the chamber, López said he would back Zapatero until the courts produced evidence to the contrary.
López told journalists the courts should “investigate, go all the way and put the proof on the table”, adding that after his own dealings with the former leader he was not going to change his view. The remarks track the official Socialist line that Calama’s order, though formally damning, has yet to be tested at trial.
TRADE UNIONS FALL IN
The Socialist-aligned trade union movement has rowed in too. Pepe Álvarez, general secretary of the General Workers’ Union (UGT), said on May 20, 2026 that he had full confidence in Zapatero’s innocence while expressing respect for the judicial process.
Speaking in Mérida, in western Spain, Álvarez suggested the former leader had become “an uncomfortable gentleman” for some sectors precisely because he had returned to public debate to defend the Sánchez Government’s record. He pointed to Zapatero’s legacy on equal marriage and women’s rights, and noted that legal experts had reached starkly different readings of Calama’s order.
RUFIÁN’S CAVEAT
The reaction has been more awkward for the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the small party whose votes keep Sánchez’s minority government afloat. Its spokesman in the lower house, Gabriel Rufián, said the affair was personally painful — nine ERC figures, he reminded MPs, sleep at home in part thanks to Zapatero’s role in the amnesty for those convicted over the 2017 Catalan independence push.
Even so, Rufián did not dismiss the strength of the 88-page court order. He summed up the dilemma bluntly: “If it’s true, it’s shit; if it’s a lie, it’s even bigger shit.” The latter, he argued, because in his view the Spanish Right is routinely cleared by the same courts.
PODEMOS ACKNOWLEDGES THE DAMAGE
The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, told reporters in the corridors of the Congress that the court order “does not look good” for Zapatero. Belarra has repeatedly argued that the Right is the chief beneficiary of any judicial probe into the Left, but on May 20, 2026 she conceded that Calama’s reasoning was hard to wave away.
A PRESIDENT SURROUNDED BY INVESTIGATIONS
The Plus Ultra inquiry is the latest in a string of probes around the Prime Minister. His wife, Begoña Gómez, faces a separate corruption investigation. A court is examining the affairs of his brother, David Sánchez. Ábalos and Cerdán face their own proceedings, and the Attorney General has himself been the subject of legal action. The case itself turns on a €53 million state bailout for the airline in March 2021, with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor suspecting that part of the money was channelled through shell companies tied to Venezuelan businessmen.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Zapatero is due before Calama on June 2, 2026. He retains the presumption of innocence and has denied any wrongdoing.
The Socialist leadership has bet its political capital on his exoneration, even as its parliamentary partners hedge their words and the opposition presses for an early vote. The next round in the courtroom — and in the lower house — will test how long that bet can hold.
