Pedro Sanchez: Opposition mocks him with “Tempation Island” video

Minster President Pedro Sánchez has no easy stand in Spain. Several people from his closer environment are in the sights of the judiciary due to allegations of corruption, including his wife. The opposition tries to use this by all means-even with AI generated videos.

The opposition party PP published such a clip entitled “The Island of Corruption” on the Internet. The video is clearly based on the reality TV show “Tempation Island”, which is also very popular in Spain. Pictures of Sanchez with a free torso and his wife Begoña Gómez are shown. His brother David Sánchez can also be seen, as well as former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos, long one of the prisoners of the Prime Minister. The Spanish public prosecutor also investigates them.

At the national level, this may still go through as a skirmish among political opponents. But the PP had hardly expected that the video would trigger a small diplomatic scandal at an international level. In the clip, the Dominican Republic is shown on a map. There, “Tempation Island” is shot, but in the video the Dominican Republic is called “island of corruption”.

Of course, the government didn’t like that. The Foreign Ministry complained to X about the presentation that was an “malignant and incomprehensible attack”. To exploit the Dominican Republic for domestic policy purposes is “unacceptable”. In addition, the Foreign Ministry emphasized that the country had made great progress in terms of the rule of law and combating corruption in the past.

So the PP was forced to withdraw the video on the same day and to apologize: “At no time was it the intention to damage the image of the Dominican Republic, a country with a long tradition of friendship and closeness to Spain.” And ultimately it was even Sánchez itself, actually the target of the video, which had to smooth the waves on a diplomatic level. He apologized in the name of Spain and also emphasized the friendly relationships with the Dominican Republic.

Sánchez has been in office as Prime Minister since 2018 and is currently leading a minority government. His wife is said to have exploited her husband’s office as part of her professional relationships, in particular to obtain the co-management of a master’s program at the Compluteense University in Madrid. At a first hearing in court, she said in December that she had “nothing to hide”. Sánchez speaks of an “intrigue”.