{"id":39169,"date":"2019-04-29T03:22:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-29T03:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39169"},"modified":"2019-04-29T03:22:48","modified_gmt":"2019-04-29T03:22:48","slug":"who-is-pedro-sanchez-leader-of-spains-socialist-workers-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=39169","title":{"rendered":"Who is Pedro Sanchez, leader of Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Spain\u2019<\/a>s centre-left Socialist Worker\u2019s Party (PSOE) has won 123 seats in Spain’s general election.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The results offer Pedro Sanchez, its leader, a chance to form a government with left-wing Unidas Podemos (UP) and regional nationalist parties.<\/p>\n

Since becoming prime minister in 2018, Sanchez, 47, has taken PSOE from near-irrelevance back to its position as the most popular party in Spain.<\/p>\n

He became the country’s prime minister after a no-confidence vote against Mariano Rajoy, from the centre-right People\u2019s Party (PP), who ruled since 2011.<\/p>\n

Sanchez was widely considered the winner of televised debates leading up to the elections, which appears to have won over undecided voters.<\/p>\n

Who is Sanchez?<\/h2>\n

Sanchez, who hails from Madrid, is a lawyer who has worked with the centre-left party since 1993.<\/p>\n

He has served as PSOE’s general secretary since 2014, when the party was in the midst of a downward slope after five years of PP victories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sanchez was little known when he became the socialist leader. He left his post in 2016 to resume it in 2017.<\/p>\n

When Sanchez became prime minister, PSOE held 84 seats and had a tense coalition with UP and other regional parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sanchez relied on support from Catalan nationalist parties, who rejected his party\u2019s budget proposal in February, leading to early elections being called.<\/p>\n

Where does he stand on the issues?\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Sanchez is centre-left in many of his positions, including international issues like immigration and refugees, the European Union and the economy.<\/p>\n

PSOE backed a move to exhume Francisco Franco in 2018, though it faced opposition from his family and Vox, which views Franco\u2019s rule favourably.<\/p>\n

The remains of Spain\u2019s fascist dictator, who ruled from 1939 until 1975,\u00a0<\/span>lie at the Valley of the Fallen, a monumental compound which includes a large basilica, constructed in part by his political enemies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sanchez is also socially liberal and supports LGBT rights and women\u2019s right to abortion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sanchez and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias agreed to the biggest wage hike<\/a> in 40 years in 2018 as part of a series of agreements on the 2019 budget, raising the minimum wage by 22 percent.<\/p>\n

That budget did not pass.<\/p>\n

Regarding Catalonia\u2019s independence<\/a>, Sanchez has said he would reinitiate dialogue with Catalan leaders, whose independence drive in 2017 shook Spain and the EU.<\/p>\n

This came in contrast to the right-wing bloc, headed by PP, which supported stripping Catalonia of its regional autonomy and placing it under the direct rule of the national government.<\/p>\n

However, Sanchez has explicitly stated there would be no independence, or even a state-recognised referendum on secession.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s centre-left Socialist Worker\u2019s Party (PSOE) has won 123 seats in Spain’s general election. The results offer Pedro Sanchez, its leader, a chance to form a government with left-wing Unidas Podemos (UP) and regional nationalist parties. Since becoming prime minister in 2018, Sanchez, 47, has taken PSOE from near-irrelevance back to its position as the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}