Pedro and the Helium Balloons

In April 2008, a Brazilian priest named Adelir Antonio de Carli tied himself to a thousand colorful helium balloons. His aim was to set a record and raise funds for a noble cause. He partly succeeded: he ascended over 6,000 meters but drifted out over the open ocean, and his body was found floating weeks later. He was a man of faith, but perhaps he trusted the latex a little too much.

In a certain sense, Pedro Sánchez resembles that priest. His objective has been similarly ambitious — not noble, but grandiose nonetheless — and he is just as unlikely to avoid a disastrous descent. He rose well, buoyed by balloons borrowed from others — although not all of them brightly hued: many were magenta, some purple, a few yellow, and a handful light blue. Each balloon represented an alliance. Each alliance signified a promise. And each promise was a tension with reality. What’s happening now isn’t merely that they’re deflating — they’re bursting one by one, every single day. With every explosion, Sánchez loses altitude. He doesn’t completely fall, but neither does he regain height.

The presidency of Pedro Sánchez has been an aerial experiment: a mix of ambition, calculation, and relativism. When votes weren’t enough, he rented seats. When legal frameworks proved insufficient, he invoked urgency. When the Constitution stood in his way, he reinterpreted it as if it were a medieval text.

Every day another balloon bursts — ministers disoriented, opportunistic allies, and compliant journalists detonating behind him. From his so-called retreat to reflect on the purpose of his office, scandals have followed relentlessly. Lately, the cacophony of exploding balloons has reached the spectacle of a Valencian mascletà. If he wore a cassock, his case would be akin to that of the ill-fated Father Adelir.

Koldo, Aldama, Delcy, Ábalos, Begoña, Tito Berni, the attorney general, his brother, and his father-in-law — they’ve all burst. His brother-in-law? Of course they never fail. Gallardo, Leire Díez, an entire state parador — all have detonated. And every day, a new balloon goes. Sometimes you hear a weird buzz that momentarily drowns out the chaos — those are the drones of official propaganda, hovering on social networks with prefabricated messaging. Other times, underground echoes emerge: leaked audios that disrupt the narrative.

In this situation, Sánchez no longer governs — he survives. He doesn’t propose; he merely resists. His strategy isn’t to lead the country, but to buy time. And as everyone knows, time is just another balloon.

The opposition, for its part, hardly inspires either. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has dropped his glasses — better advised, it seems — and left behind some of his complexes. Yet his vision remains blurry. He promises to undo what Sánchez has done wrong — and there’s no shortage of that — but the clearest concrete proposal he’s articulated so far is more benefits for people with celiac disease.

Feijóo needs to ignite the streets nationwide with his call for demonstrations on June 8 — because a filled Plaza de España in Madrid alone won’t be enough. Sánchez teeters. The Catalan cream has gone rancid; the Basque blood pudding has cooled too much; and the national scene is beginning to tire of it all. Europe, which once praised him, is now beginning to look away.

Even in Brussels, no one expects Sánchez to be a leader of anything anymore: he is barely tolerated as an anomaly in continental politics. He has chosen to confront NATO — but he does so unarmed.

If the Spanish government has become a ridiculous fairground attraction, it is because Sánchez decided on this format. So when the last balloon finally bursts, there will be no epic finale, no grand tragedy. There will simply be a thick silence, like the hush that follows a fireworks display.

Maybe it will happen on a Friday at three in the afternoon — the ninth hour, the hour of Christ’s death, according to tradition. But the political crucifixion of Sánchez’s era will be far more cruel: solitary and, above all, without faith or possible resurrection. Unlike the Brazilian priest — may the Lord have him in glory — Sánchez did not trust in God. He trusted in the reflection of his own image.

Now the balloons that held him aloft are scarce; the few that remain are about to explode. And he, like poor Father Adelir, will not avoid his final descent into the sea.