Transport, energy and immigration. Sánchez’s three failures: the PD model

The Italian left is celebrating Donald Trump’s resounding electoral defeat, but it would do better to reflect on the quieter decline of Pedro Sánchez. For years, socialist Spain has been held up by the ‘Campo Largo’ – and in particular by Elly Schlein – as a guiding light. Sánchez’s governance was a preview of what the PD would have liked to achieve in Italy: a country capable of investing in infrastructure and public transport, of accelerating the energy transition and of managing immigration. The problem is that, behind the glossy façade, the Sánchez model has proved extremely fragile, with three crises highlighting the state’s inability to fulfil its essential functions.

The most recent crisis concerns transport. In mid-December 2025, Schlein had praised the €60 national rail pass for Spanish trains, contrasting the Sánchez government’s measure with that of the Meloni government, which she claimed would have ‘cut’ investment in transport. The rail network, however, is not just about affordable tickets, but above all about maintenance and safety systems. And it is precisely these aspects that have been at the heart of two rail disasters in nine months. In January this year, the accident at Adamuz, in Andalusia, claimed 46 lives. On 31 October, two trains collided in Urda, in Castile-La Mancha, claiming 69 lives. One hundred and fifteen deaths in less than a year. Including the Angrois disaster in 2013, Spain has recorded more fatalities in rail accidents than the rest of the world combined throughout the history of high-speed rail. These are not simply two tragic accidents, but the result of a lack of maintenance and the malfunctioning of safety systems and protocols. Spaniards may well have a €60 season ticket allowing them to travel on any train across the country, but they no longer have the reasonable assurance that they will arrive alive.

The second crisis concerns energy, another flagship of the Sánchez model. Spain was presented as Europe’s leader in renewables, capable of modernising its energy system and reducing its dependence on fossil fuels. Then, on 28 April 2025, a total blackout struck, paralysing the Iberian Peninsula. This widespread power cut, which lasted ten hours, was described by ENTSO-E (the network of European electricity system operators) as the most serious incident in Europe’s electricity system in over twenty years. The official death toll from the ‘gran apagón’ stands at eight, but according to a study in Nature Communications, there were 167 excess deaths in Spain in the days following the blackout compared with expected figures, likely due to indirect effects such as the malfunctioning of medical equipment. 

Once again, behind the façade of the rapid roll-out of renewables lay the reality of an inadequate grid – a vulnerable system incapable of stabilising generation and ensuring continuity of supply.

The third crisis is the migration crisis. Here too, Spain served as the model: reception, integration, regularisation and the ability to manage seemingly unsustainable flows. The continued rise of the anti-immigration right-wing party Vox was not perceived as a sign of an unsustainable model, partly due to the pressure exerted by population growth on property prices (another crisis – the housing crisis – which has erupted in recent months but is common to other countries). Then, at the end of July 2026, suddenly, the exclave of Ceuta was overwhelmed by the largest wave of irregular crossings ever recorded at an external border of the European Union: around 80,000 people crossed the border from Morocco in less than two days. Around 140 migrants died whilst attempting to cross the border; for weeks, the inhabitants of Ceuta barricaded themselves in their homes whilst the streets were overrun by thousands of migrants. Even today, whilst normality is struggling to return, there are 15,000 migrants in the city. Sánchez himself, who managed the crisis whilst on holiday in the Canary Islands, described the mass influx as a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity”: another unprecedented event in the country’s history, which laid bare the authorities’ lack of preparedness – their inability first to foresee the arrival of such a wave and then to manage it.

Transport, energy, immigration: three different sectors, one common problem. The Sánchez model has been praised for its communication, for building a progressive image, and for its message about the return of a state that is present and active. But the reality is that of a government which has failed in its essential duties: ensuring the inviolability of national borders and the security of strategic infrastructure. So that people can live normally in their cities, see trains reach their destinations and have the light come on when they flick a switch. Ultimately, this is what governments are judged on, in America as in Spain. With three weeks to go before the election, the polls show an overwhelming majority for the People’s Party and Vox in what could be the best result for the right in the history of democratic Spain. Sánchez is heading for a defeat comparable in scale to that of Trump. The broad coalition aspiring to govern the country should ask itself whether that is really the model it intends to follow.