Spanish PM suspends public duties to ‘reflect’ on future

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said that he will suspend public duties until next week to decide whether he wants to continue leading the government after a court launched a probe of his wife.

“I need to pause and think,” Mr Sanchez said 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,” he wrote.

He said he would appear before the media on Monday to announce his decision.

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

Mr Sanchez said the seriousness of the attacks that he and his wife were receiving merited a measured response.

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

Manos Limpias said Ms 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.