Pedro Sánchez is back … now Spain’s PM must make his daring gamble pay off

The socialist leader’s pact with separatist activists has returned him to power for now, but it’s a strategy fraught with political uncertainty

At the end of an investiture debate that had been fraught, savage and bizarre, even by recent standards, the defeated leader of Spain’s conservative opposition offered his triumphant socialist rival a handshake. It was not accompanied by his warmest wishes.

“This was a mistake,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the People’s party (PP), as he pressed the flesh with a smiling Pedro Sánchez on Thursday. “And you’re responsible for what you’ve just done.”