Zapatero's indictment sheds light on Sánchez's murky relationship with China

"Multilateralism." For some time now, Pedro Sánchez has been using that word as the key to his lamentable international policy.

An opaque operation to tie Spain to the world's largest authoritarian regime
The Spanish government and left are imitating Putin and reacting to Zapatero's indictment with massive disinformation

This "multilateralism" is, basically, the Spanish socialist leader's pretext for cozying up to dictatorships like China and Venezuela, two authoritarian regimes that violate human rights. On April 9, I warned here about an opaque operation to tie Spain to the world's most authoritarian regime.

In that article, I referred to Sánchez's rapprochement with the Chinese communist dictatorship, to the point of becoming the main partner of that anti-democratic regime in the European Union. In my text, I linked to a news item published that same day by the online newspaper Vozpópuli, which warned that Sánchez was returning to China without having explained the details of his meeting with Xi Jinping a year ago. Details that the parliamentary opposition demanded to know, but which—as he does with so many other things—the Socialist leader refused to reveal.

When a government acts with opacity, it gives rise to the worst suspicions. In Sánchez's case, the drift of his government and his party was already fertile ground for seeing cause for alarm in that dangerous relationship with a dictatorship. Spanish socialism is mired in serious corruption scandals that indicate that behind all its political propaganda there might be a machine for illicit enrichment, something that would explain such scandalous things as Sánchez's proposal from China to weaken the role of democratic countries in the UN, a measure that would benefit clearly to dictatorships like communist China.

This Tuesday, the judicial indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a person who wields enormous influence in the Sánchez government and the Socialist Party (PSOE), has uncovered a criminal network that profited from the sale of gold and oil and maintained contacts with "authorities and economic operators in Venezuela, China, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries." " rel="noopener" target="_blank">One of those contacts was the Communist Party of China (CPC), the single party of Xi Jinping's dictatorship.

According to the court order released yesterday, the network allegedly headed by Zapatero contacted companies linked to the CPC to purchase oil from the Venezuelan dictatorship. This network reportedly acted as a kind of tollbooth for the Nicolás Maduro regime in multi-million dollar oil sales. It is inconceivable that the Sánchez government was unaware of these operations, given their geopolitical significance and the fact that the coalition government of socialists and communists receives detailed information from Spanish intelligence services on such sensitive matters.

This would explain Sánchez's lack of transparency in his contacts with communist China: was he trying to hide Zapatero's network? Did he not know what business dealings the former Prime Minister and former leader of the PSOE was involved in with China and Venezuela? What role did that network play in those bilateral contacts between Spain and China? And above all, what personal benefits could Sánchez have secured by placing Spain within the sphere of influence of that dictatorship? The Prime Minister has many explanations to give.

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Photo: La Moncloa. The President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, shaking hands with the Chinese communist dictator Xi Jinping on April 11, 2026, during the Spanish socialist leader's visit to China.