The Sánchez government attempts to clean up its image with a retouched photo from 2023

The response of the socialist government and the PSOE to its corruption scandals has gone from the realm of the demented to the comical.

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Pedro Sánchez's insane behaviour as scandals mount in his party

This Friday, as political corruption scandals and sexual harassment cases close in on the government and the Socialist Party, Pedro Sánchez and several of his ministers (Félix Bolaños, Óscar López, Óscar Puente and Pilar Alegría) have shared the cover of an Italian leftist magazine that named the Spanish Prime Minister "Person of the Year." The cover is certainly amusing:

Social media has been flooded with humorous comments about this cover, whose photo is clearly retouched and isn't even recent. Due to the visible physical decline of the Spanish Socialist leader amidst a wave of corruption scandals, L'Espresso has resorted to Photoshop and removed some of Sánchez's gray hair. The original photo was published on the La Moncloa website on March 8, 2023. Here you can see an enlargement of the original photo in which Sánchez's gray hair is clearly visible:

As expected, memes ridiculing the cover and making puns about the Italian magazine's name quickly appeared. Here we can see an image shared by @Pablo2k3, using artificial intelligence:

And here's another image posted by @maria33894:

L'Espresso has justified this cover with an editorial in which it omits any reference to the corruption scandals of Sánchez's government and the negative data of his administration, stating that he is "a model for Europe" and "a benchmark in a Europe mired in fear and uncertainty." Reading these accolades, one has to wonder: how much has this propaganda operation cost us Spaniards?

Significantly, that laudatory editorial in L'Espresso about Sánchez is signed by Emilio Carelli, who between 2018 and 2021 was a member of parliament for the left-wing Five Star Movement, which since 2024 has been part of the European United Left parliamentary group, which brings together the communist parties of the European Parliament.

Coincidentally, yesterday the Spanish National Police arrested two executives of a Spanish airline linked to the Venezuelan regime and which is being investigated for a multi-million euro government bailout, a bailout that has long dominated news reports about alleged corruption cases within Pedro Sánchez's socialist government. In this context, the magazine cover and the government's campaign to promote it demonstrate a clear ineptitude and great desperation at a time when Sánchez is seriously under scrutiny, both in Spain and in Europe. The Spanish socialist government has made it clear that it has lost all sense of the ridiculous.