Feijóo brands Sánchez an 'authoritarian president' at Madrid summit, citing judicial distrust and parliamentary disregard
Speaking at the EPP Libertas Forum in Madrid on 15 July 2026, Spanish opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo described Pedro Sánchez as an 'authoritarian president' who 'distrusts judges' and 'despises parliamentary majorities,' a day after Sánchez's brother received a nine-year ban from public office.
The Libertas Forum setting
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain's Partido Popular, opened the European People's Party (EPP) Libertas Forum in Madrid on Wednesday, 15 July 2026. The two-day gathering brought together more than 60 political formations from 42 European and Ibero-American countries. Attendees included EPP president Manfred Weber, Italian vice-premier Antonio Tajani, Portuguese prime minister Luís Montenegro, Belgian deputy prime minister Vincent Van Peteghem, and Peruvian president-elect Keiko Fujimori, who joined by videoconference. Venezuelan opposition figures Edmundo González and María Corina Machado also participated, the latter remotely.
The 'authoritarian' checklist
Feijóo did not name Pedro Sánchez directly, but his description left no doubt about the target. He told the audience that recognising an authoritarian requires no interrogation about beliefs, only observation of what they seek to control.
If he distrusts judges, if he despises parliamentary majorities when they do not favour him, if he replaces merit and effort with state dependency, if he questions the independence of institutions, and if he fears the ballot box when it does not guarantee him power, look no further: that is an authoritarian president.
The remarks drew strong applause from roughly 400 EPP and PP officials in the room, according to El Mundo.
Domestic trigger: the David Sánchez sentence
The speech came one day after a court in Badajoz sentenced David Sánchez, the prime minister's brother, to nine years of disqualification from public office for prevaricación administrativa (administrative prevarication) related to his appointment as director of the Performing Arts Office of the Badajoz Provincial Council. The sentence bars him from holding any public post or standing for election during that period but carries no prison time. Feijóo framed the verdict as evidence of the executive's disregard for judicial independence, telling the international audience that Spain 'suffers the threat of a weakened democracy, attacked from the highest institutions that should defend it above all else.'
'Remove their masks'
Feijóo urged fellow conservatives to 'remove the masks' of authoritarian leaders, insisting that 'democracy can never be subordinated to anyone's personal project.' He contrasted his own position with that of leaders who speak from the calm of consolidated democracies, stating he addressed the forum from a country where democratic norms are under strain. He also warned against populism, grouping 'communists, populists, authoritarians, dictators and radicals' as forces that have learned to tolerate their differences in order to act jointly against Western liberal democracies.
The Ibero-American bridge
A recurring theme was the transatlantic bond between Europe and Latin America. Feijóo called on Manfred Weber to make Ibero-America the EPP's priority and predicted that Spain would soon leave behind an era in which a democratically elected government 'whitewashed and did business with dictatorships.' He cited right-leaning governments in Argentina, Ecuador and Peru as evidence of a 'democratic awakening' and expressed confidence that Spain would join that trend. 'Change in Spain is closer,' he said, adding that the country would not make the mistake of veering toward the populism others are now escaping.
Spain, sooner rather than later, will join the democratic awakening that allows us to rebuild our institutions, our individual freedoms and our historic alliances.
What comes next
The Libertas Forum continues through Thursday. Later on Wednesday, Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso was scheduled to address the gathering. Feijóo's escalation of rhetoric against Sánchez, moving from earlier accusations of an 'authoritarian streak' to the full label of 'authoritarian president,' marks a new intensity in Spain's political confrontation as the PP positions itself for the next general election.
