{"id":133707,"date":"2026-06-29T19:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/133707\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T19:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T19:57:09","slug":"resisting-to-the-very-end-at-what-cost-evangelical-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/133707\/","title":{"rendered":"Resisting to the very end \u2013 at what cost?, Evangelical Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pedro S\u00e1nchez, the Spanish president of the government, and secretary-general of the PSOE party (Social Democrats) finds himself in an unbearable situation with several corruption cases<\/a> in the courts, including those of a former minister and right hand, the party’s powerful national coordinator, and even a legal case around his own wife. The crises bearing down on him one after another. <\/p>\n

His resilience is remarkable, surpassing all imagination; so too is his ability to secure the support that has kept his government afloat, through shifting political alliances that few are capable of forging.<\/p>\n

All Evangelical Focus news and opinion,\u00a0on your WhatsApp<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some believe that this resistance is driven by a cult of personality. Those who voice dissent are labelled as traitors not merely to S\u00e1nchez, but to the party\u2019s project<\/p>\n

Many prime ministers have resigned under far less pressure, from Willy Brandt \u2013 who stepped down after discovering that his personal secretary (the role \u00c1balos played for S\u00e1nchez) was spying for the GDR \u2013 to Keir Starmer<\/a>, who did so recently, amongst other reasons, for having appointed a senior official implicated in the case of Epstein, the sex offender.<\/p>\n

But S\u00e1nchez is holding out; he is not giving in. Some believe that this resistance is driven by a cult of personality. They argue that within the PSOE itself, S\u00e1nchez has worked to progressively concentrate power, weakening internal mechanisms of control and accountability and eliminating or stifling any possible dissent on the grounds that attacks against him are attacks against the party and that the current political climate does not allow for dissent; those who voice dissent are labelled as traitors not merely to S\u00e1nchez, but to the party\u2019s project.<\/p>\n

Some who know him say he displays a remarkable coldness; he forgets loyalties and abandons anyone without hesitation, and, of course, washes his hands of any responsibility for having appointed key figures in his inner circle who are now facing charges or in prison.<\/p>\n

But there is another interpretation that is not incompatible with this: he is convinced that his historic responsibility is to implement profound changes in the country \u2013 changes which, in his view, are urgently needed. That is why he believes he must stand firm and not give up, conscious that these changes inevitably depend on him, that he has been destined for this task, and that this is why he has now come to the fore. And in this battle, he cannot take a single step back because his adversaries are, in truth, adversaries of Spain\u2019s destiny of progress. So the question is not why to carry on, but \u201chow one could not carry on\u201d, as the prime minister told the parliament this week.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A pastor of a church can also begin concentrating power out of the conviction that they have a purpose to fulfil, a mission to resist<\/p>\n

It is easy, from the comfort of our armchair, to assess what is happening and conclude that it is the result of the sin of self-centredness, of the obsession with believing that the future of the world depends on you and that without you only disaster remains, and that this is why you have a responsibility to resist. We can easily understand that this vision clouds one’s vision and leads one to unreasonable measures to concentrate power, to refuse to be held to account and admit mistakes, and leads one to assume that resignation would be an unforgivable sin of irresponsibility.<\/p>\n

But is this situation really so unusual? Could it not happen in some form in our own midst? We are not immune to seeing ourselves as the pastor of a church who begins a process of concentrating power\u2014not out of self-centredness, but out of the conviction that they have a purpose to fulfil, a mission in which they cannot waste time on debates because those who disagree are a stumbling block. And when calls for accountability begin, these are seen as a provocation, an attack on the spiritual authority bestowed by the Lord in a very personal way. From that point on, even considering resignation would be irresponsible. One must stand firm and not give in, in the name of the vision for the church that the pastor holds.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The church\u2019s mission is not the pastor\u2019s personal mission. Failing to understand this can burn out the pastor and end up leaving many people by the roadside <\/p>\n

It is likely that S\u00e1nchez will hold out until 2027. But what price will the PSOE pay for this? It is likely that S\u00e1nchez\u2019s heroic resistance will take with it much of his party\u2019s credibility, its image as a party with an unblemished history and as a moral beacon. It is likely that the PSOE will not return to power for decades and that, along the way, it will dash the hopes and aspirations of many voters. Nor is it immune to fading into obscurity like the Italian Socialist Party. This would be a serious matter not only for the PSOE, but for the country, which needs a social-democratic left-wing reference point.<\/p>\n

The heroic personal struggles that conflate the party\u2019s project with a personal one can lead to disaster \u2013 not just for the individual, but for the party itself. I urge us to reflect on this risk as it applies to our own context. I admire the dedicated work of so many thousands of pastors who labour expecting no greater recognition than that of the Lord, so often subjected to a lack of understanding and loneliness. That is why it is so important that we never fall into the \u2018S\u00e1nchez model\u2019 and that our vision is kept clear at all times: the church\u2019s mission is not the pastor\u2019s personal mission; it is everyone\u2019s. Failing to understand this can burn out the pastor and the church\u2019s mission itself, leaving many people by the roadside.<\/p>\n

X. Manuel Su\u00e1rez, medical doctor in Galicia (Spain) and vice president for International Affairs of the Spanish Evangelical Alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pedro S\u00e1nchez, the Spanish president of the government, and secretary-general of the PSOE party (Social Democrats) finds himself…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[129],"tags":[35545,65007,489,35543,35544,65008,65006,304,51,35546,305],"class_list":["post-133707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pedro-sanchez","tag-church-news","tag-churches","tag-corruption","tag-digital-evangelical-news","tag-evangelical-news","tag-governmentchristian-news","tag-pastors","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-politics","tag-religion-news","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116835165419709703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}