Thousands rally in Madrid to support PM, beg him to stay as corruption probe continues
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00:00 Sara, there are tens of thousands of supporters out on the streets for Pedro
00:04 Sanchez. What's the mood like in Madrid?
00:08 There's a pretty feverish atmosphere outside that Socialist Party. Basically
00:14 those thousands of Socialist supporters have answered the call from their
00:18 federal committee to come over to Madrid and there's about 50 buses have actually
00:24 come in according to the headquarters and what they're reporting to us. Now
00:30 we've seen people outside those headquarters waving all sorts of banners.
00:35 They're basically saying hold on, stay Pedro, don't leave, it is worth it and
00:43 that is answering some of those messages that Pedro Sanchez put out
00:49 in that four-page letter on Twitter on X where he basically said he would take
00:55 about five days until Monday to consider whether it was worth him remaining
01:00 leader and we've seen some strong messages from those leaders of the party
01:07 inside the headquarters. We've seen the Deputy Prime Minister talking about the
01:13 far-right mudslinging as she calls it and basically saying stay Pedro, stay
01:19 we're with you. She says that this is about the Conservative Party, the
01:24 People's Party and the far-right media refusing to accept that the
01:31 Socialists and the left-wing parties are in power and she says that that cannot
01:37 be tolerated as a democracy. Now the big question is, is what is going on inside
01:42 the Socialist Party without of course Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister himself.
01:46 Is that just a support for the Prime Minister or is this going to be a
01:52 goodbye? Is Mr. Sanchez going to step aside on Monday and give his reasons
01:58 why or will he actually stay on because the People's Party, the Conservatives say
02:03 this is all about political strategy, there's an election campaign for
02:08 Catalonia, a regional election and they say they've seen it all before. This is
02:13 Pedro Sanchez as simply trying to cynically rally the troops. Let's
02:19 focus on the investigation against his wife now. Tell us what these allegations
02:23 facing the wife are. Well Begonia Gomez was running what was a foundation at a
02:33 business university called IE and it's basically the Africa Centre. She ran that
02:40 until 2022. Now some media have alleged that she essentially used her position
02:45 as the wife of the Prime Minister to help some private companies to get
02:51 government tenders or government bailouts. In particular that she met with
02:56 the executive of Globalia which owns Aeroropa which did then benefit from a
03:02 government bailout. Now the Prime Minister and his wife deny those
03:06 allegations and they said essentially say that they are taking legal action
03:10 against the newspapers that have put them out.
03:12 Sara Morris in Madrid, thank you so much for your analysis.