A protest march that organisers called the “Dignity Parade” filled the central avenues of Madrid on Saturday, with police estimating attendance at roughly 80,000 and organisers claiming a figure several times higher. The demonstration, backed by the mainstream conservative Popular Party (PP) and the far-right Vox, was the largest single-day mobilisation against Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez since the corruption files involving his family reopened earlier this spring.
The cases trailing the prime minister have widened steadily this year. His brother David Sánchez is scheduled to stand trial later this summer on charges of influence-peddling related to a music-director post in Badajoz. His wife, Begoña Gómez, is the subject of a separate, slow-moving investigation in Madrid; and a court last month placed former Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a longtime Sánchez ally, under formal investigation for influence-peddling.
On the rostrum at Plaza de España, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo demanded “an immediate motion of confidence” and accused the prime minister of “using the office as a shield.” Vox leader Santiago Abascal called the assembled crowd “a silent majority that has stopped being silent.” Sánchez, attending a meeting of European Socialist leaders in Lisbon at the time of the march, did not address the protest directly but his office issued a brief statement saying he would “continue to govern.”
The political pressure has been amplified by a heavy Socialist defeat in Andalusian regional elections two weeks ago, when the PP increased its majority and Vox more than doubled its seat count. Polling by the state-funded CIS published last week put the PP roughly seven points ahead of the Socialists at the national level, with Vox tracking in third place.
Sánchez’s minority government continues to depend on a complex coalition of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, several of which have signalled they are reconsidering their support. The Catalan Junts per Catalunya has said it will demand fresh concessions on amnesty implementation before backing the autumn budget; the Basque PNV told regional media on Friday that its patience with the central executive was “near exhausted.”
Inside the Socialist Party (PSOE), several regional barons have begun to question Sánchez’s ability to lead the party into a national election that must be called by the end of 2027 at the latest. Castilla-La Mancha president Emiliano García-Page, long a Sánchez critic from within, said in a Sunday interview that “the party deserves a serious conversation about who runs against the PP, not a denial that the question exists.”
The prime minister has so far ruled out an early election and shows no sign of stepping aside. Allies say he intends to use the EU’s Council presidency rotation in 2027 as a platform; opponents counter that his political clock will not run that long. Saturday’s march left no obvious resolution but made it considerably harder for the government to argue that the corruption files belong only on the back pages.