Hero syndrome, the dangerous drift of narcissism suffered by Pedro Sánchez

On August 13, 1984, a truly strange event occurred at Los Angeles International Airport.

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“An innate desire for attention”

The closing ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympic Games had taken place the night before, and the various delegations were preparing to return home. A bus arrived at the airport carrying the Turkish team's luggage. A 41-year-old police officer named Jimmy Wade Pearson, a member of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Division, suddenly appeared and discovered a bomb planted inside the bus. While the others fled, he remained calm, unhooked the bomb's wires, and ran 45 meters carrying the explosive to a nearby runway, where he threw it.

The bomb didn't explode. It wasn't even set to detonate, but Pearson was hailed as a hero, and the Los Angeles Police Chief even awarded him a medal for his actions. However, the investigation into the bomb revealed the strangeness of the incident. Pearson was required to take a lie detector test, and he confessed that he had planted the bomb himself. Overnight, the officer went from hero to under arrest, because even though the bomb wasn't set to explode, the panic it caused could have resulted in injuries. Pearson's own lawyer described him as someone with "an innate desire for attention."

The hero syndrome and the dark triad

As a result of that event, the term "hero syndrome" began to be used, a phenomenon whose causes include narcissism and which can lead a person to create dangerous situations and even commit illegal acts in order to later present themselves as a savior.

Last year I spoke here about Pedro Sánchez as a clear example of the "dark triad," a dangerous cocktail of narcissism (a superiority complex that causes a person to believe they are superior to others), Machiavellianism (a lack of morals and a belief that the ends justify the means), and psychopathy (antisocial, selfish, and insensitive behavior towards others). Sánchez has been exhibiting these traits since coming to power, behaving like an unscrupulous politician who believes that anything goes to achieve his desires.

Seeking abroad the popularity lost in Spain

These flaws in his personality are now taking a new and dangerous turn, amidst a serious political crisis triggered by the corruption scandals affecting his government, his party, and his personal circle. Increasingly unpopular in Spain, Sánchez is seeking popularity abroad, presenting himself as the antithesis of Donald Trump and harshly criticizing the United States and Israel, in order to win the applause of the international left, appealing to international law as justification for these criticisms.

Violating Spanish law under the pretext of upholding international law

Curiously, while invoking international law, Sánchez disregards Spanish law, specifically the Constitution, whose Article 134 establishes the government's constitutional duty to present its budget within a very specific timeframe. Sánchez has failed to get Parliament to approve a single one of his budgets in these three years of his term. He continues to extend the 2023 budget, which predates the last general election. Let us recall that in March 2018, when he was in the opposition, Sánchez stated: "A government without a budget is a government that governs nothing."

With the legal deadline for submitting his 2026 budget having already passed, Sánchez yesterday ruled out the possibility of the Council of Ministers presenting this year's budget to Parliament, citing the war in Iran as a pretext, as if resolving that conflict depended on him and his duties to the Spanish people were secondary and could wait. Thus, this legislature could end in 2027 without Sánchez having had a single budget approved, something that has not happened in the almost half-century of democracy in Spain.

Basically, Sánchez is telling us that he can't pass a budget because he's busy saving the world, that Spain's problems are secondary to him, and that there are more important things to prioritize. Any other government would have already called elections in this situation, given his clear inability to do his most basic duty, which is to present a budget and get it approved by Parliament. Instead, Sánchez is promoting his career as a wannabe Superman, a guy who thinks he can fix the world's problems after having created a disastrous economic and social situation in Spain with his disastrous socialist policies.

A socialism transformed into a sect

A logical question arises: what other constitutional duties will Sánchez consider dispensable? Calling elections in 2027, for example? Having already violated the Constitution, displaying a clear authoritarian streak and presenting himself as a messiah, we can now expect anything from him. From him and his court of flatterers and fanatics, people willing to justify anything he does. Sánchez has transformed Spanish socialism into a sect guided by a cult of personality, a political movement with increasingly religious overtones, based on blind faith in the leader and fanatical hatred of his political rivals. Someone like that is quite capable of destroying our democracy under the guise of wanting to save us. In fact, all his actions point in that direction.

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Photo: La Moncloa.