Es Noticia: Sánchez se escuda tras la guerra de Irán

March 19, 2026·1 hr·4 clips

Sánchez spent eight years accusing opposition politicians of being 'prophets of catastrophe' — and this week adopted the identical strategy himself, manufacturing fear to boost approval ratings.

1. Es Noticia, hosted by Juan Pablo Polvorinos on Es Radio, broadcasts its Thursday March 19 edition — Father's Day in Spain — covering the Iran war's economic impact and the government's political response. 2. Host Juan Pablo Polvorinos anchors the program with reporters Noelia Bautista (energy markets), Leticia Vaquero and Leticia Barquín (government measures), defense consultant Enrique Navarro, and legal analyst Miguel Ángel Pérez. 3. The episode's central argument is that Sánchez is systematically exploiting the Iran war to elevate his poll standing, suppress domestic accountability, and provide cover for a third consecutive year without a national budget. 4. The host plays eight years of Sánchez audio clips in which the president attacked political opponents using labels — 'traffickers of fear,' 'prophets of catastrophe,' 'agoreros' — that now precisely describe the government's deliberate fear-messaging about the Iran war crisis. 5. María Jesús Montero, Second Vice President, amplified the government's fear strategy by declaring this crisis 'not like the pandemic or Ukraine' — which the host countered by noting the pandemic killed 150,000 in Spain alone and the Ukraine war left one million dead and seven million displaced. 6. Spain's national budget situation: the government has now operated on 2022 accounts for 39 consecutive months, breaking four successive public commitments — end of 2025, first quarter 2026, and now indefinitely — with Montero explicitly calling budget-less governance 'constitutional' and 'a merit.' 7. Fuel prices rose sharply on the week: gasoline up 11.6%, diesel up 6.7%, with the average litre of gasoline at €1.83 (highest since November 2022) and diesel at €1.70, following US-Israel attacks on Pars Sud, the world's largest gas processing plant. 8. Brent crude reached $120 per barrel before settling at $111, while gas prices rose 30% in a single day; the ECB maintained rates at 2% while warning of inflation risk and not ruling out increases. 9. Spain's IBEX-35 fell more than 2.5% on the day, with ArcelorMittal, Celnex, and Indra each falling around 5-7%, while the Frankfurt DAX fell over 3% and London's FTSE dropped 2.9%. 10. Defense analyst Enrique Navarro assessed the US-Iran campaign as strategically adrift: the original objective was regime change, driven by Israeli intelligence assessments given to the White House; that objective has failed because the Iranian regime is more consolidated than before. 11. Navarro argued the US must now invent 'sufficiently satisfying' new objectives to justify the campaign, that Israel needs the regime to fall, and that Trump is caught between his personal desire for a military win and the political cost — making this 'the biggest mess Trump has gotten himself into in politics.' 12. Víctor de Aldama, the cooperating Trama Coldo defendant, appeared before Judge Ismael Moreno at the National Court for two hours, delivered a sealed envelope containing documentation about 250-million-dollar Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA oil quotas, and gave testimony described by legal sources cited in Libertad Digital as 'a bomb for Moncloa and for Pedro Sánchez's PSOE.' 13. Judicial sources told Libertad Digital the Aldama declaration was 'very potent with many implications' and that 'immediate and important consequences' could follow in the investigation of PSOE illegal party financing. 14. Coalition tensions: Sumar's Pablo Agustín Duy publicly demanded rental contract extensions in the anti-crisis decree, while Junts Secretary General Jordi Turull confirmed Junts is not negotiating anything and already warned it will not vote for decrees that mix measures it opposes with ones it supports. 15. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that if the PP were governing, fuel VAT would have been cut from 21% to 10% already, and accused the current government of profiting from the war while claiming to oppose it. 16. CCOO Secretary General Unai Sordo criticized the incoming anti-crisis plan as 'short route' — very surgical measures that would fall short of what the crisis demands. 17. The program shifts between editorial monologue, expert interview with Navarro, live reports from Brussels on the European Council meeting, and market analysis from Noelia Bautista. 18. The tone is consistently critical of the Sánchez government, deploying the president's own archived audio clips to construct the irony of his current messaging against his eight years of identical attacks on others. 19. Spanish news followers tracking the Iran war's economic impact on Spain, the Trama Coldo corruption investigation, or the government's budget failure will find substantial new detail and expert analysis here. 20. Listeners aligned with Spain's current coalition government, or those seeking neutral coverage of the Middle East conflict, will find the editorial framework and domestic political focus unsuited to their perspective.

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