In liberal democracies of the present day, corruption rarely begins with a president personally negotiating a commission or signing an irregular contract. With these rules of the game, scandals tend to arise in other ways, such as through networks of trust, circles of allies, or loyalty structures that articulate power ecosystems where individual responsibility blends with a broader, more diffuse and politically more dangerous responsibility. In these cases, the concept of culpa in vigilando, which in Spain is codified in Article 1903 of the Civil Code, is extremely important.
What does this legal concept translate to? The culpa in vigilando refers to the responsibility that can be attributed to those who, by virtue of their position of authority or supervision, had the duty to watch over, prevent, or control the actions of others and did not do so with the due diligence required. Under this interpretation, the debate about Pedro Sánchez is no longer solely about the existence or absence of specific crimes in people within his political or institutional circle. The question beginning to emerge is to what extent a leadership as strong as Sánchez’s can politically detach itself from the dynamics within the power structure that it itself built.
“Quien concentra autoridad también asume una responsabilidad reforzada sobre los mecanismos de control, selección y vigilancia de quienes ejercen poder en su nombre”
That is the logic of culpa in vigilando. It does not necessarily imply criminal liability nor does it mean asserting that the president was aware of specific facts or participated in them. It is about the idea that whoever concentrates authority also assumes reinforced responsibility for the mechanisms of control, selection, and surveillance of those who exercise power in his name.
Europe has spent decades discussing this question. The fall of Bettino Craxi, Italian prime minister from 1983 to 1987, is a symbolic case. The leader of Italian social democracy denied for years that he personally organized the system of illegal financing that permeated the country’s politics. However, the public’s perception evolved toward a different conclusion: a leader who accumulated such power could not simply present himself as a bystander to what happened around him.
Something similar happened in Germany. The CDU’s irregular financing scandal damaged the legacy of former chancellor Helmut Kohl. Not so much because there were accusations equivalent to the Italian ones, but because a sense emerged that a political machinery built around a dominant figure had relaxed its supervisory duties. Following this logic, in France a very similar case occurred with Jacques Chirac and the clientelist networks in the City Hall of Paris.
Today, it’s clear that Spain is not immune to these dynamics seen in the other great European systems. In fact, much of the political transformation of the last decade originated precisely from a moral reinterpretation of public responsibility. The motion of censure that brought Sánchez to power in 2018 rested on a very concrete idea: that Mariano Rajoy’s government had lost political legitimacy due to the corruption linked to the Gürtel case, in this case by a verdict, even though individual criminal responsibilities were judicially delimited.
That operation redefined the Spanish political standard.
Since then, Sánchez built much of his legitimacy on a narrative of democratic renewal, institutional exemplary conduct, and ethical superiority over the Spanish right. Precisely for that reason, any suspicion affecting people close to the socialist power ecosystem has an especially sensitive impact. Not only because of the concrete irregularities that may exist, but because it erodes the founding narrative of the very Sánchezism.
The presidentialization of power
Across almost all Western Europe, traditional parties evolved into much more vertical and personality-centered structures. Political organizations depend increasingly on highly visible leadership, centralized communication strategies, and small circles of trusted insiders. The classic intermediaries—from regional barons to internal factions or party bureaucracy—lost weight in the face of compact, highly cohesive presidential teams.
The Sánchezism probably represents one of the most advanced forms of that transformation in Spain. The political survival of Sánchez after the PSOE’s internal crisis in 2016 reinforced a political culture, through primaries, based on personal loyalty and strategic centralization. The president rebuilt the party around an extremely compact core, with very intense control over communication, candidacies, and government decisions. That concentration of power had obvious advantages, such as cohesion and high discipline and loyalty. But it also generates an inevitable effect, since it reduces the leader’s ability to present himself as completely detached from what happens within his own power structure.
“Cuanto más personalista es una estructura política, más difícil resulta separar completamente al líder de las conductas de su entorno”
The more personalist a political structure, the harder it is to completely separate the leader from the conduct of those around him. And that does not automatically make Sánchez legally responsible for anything, but it does increase the pressure on his political accountability, especially because public opinion, as seen in other countries, has developed a growing sensitivity to the indirect responsibilities of leadership.
In this context, culpa in vigilando functions as an intermediate category between crime and total political absolution. It is the gray zone where today many crises of democratic legitimacy are played out. The challenge for contemporary leaders is that the argument of absolute ignorance is no longer easily accepted. A president may ignore specific facts, but if irregularities repeatedly affect people close to him, named or politically protected by him, people begin to question the control mechanisms within his administration or party.
The paradox is that this transformation has much to do with the very evolution of mediated democracy itself. Citizens today demand levels of transparency and oversight that are virtually impossible to fully satisfy in complex political systems. Social networks, constant hyper-exposure, and polarization further accelerate any suspicion and turn every investigation into an immediate battle for public legitimacy.
This dynamic alters the traditional rules of political survival. Previously, governments fell mainly due to electoral defeats, economic crises, or decisive judicial scandals. Yet today many of them deteriorate slowly, in a wear fostered by doubts, a high perception of opacity, or the sense that there is no internal control of the Government.
Consequently, courts or what journalistic investigations reveal are not the only elements to take into account. And, bringing this to the present, the knot we face is none other than whether the Government maintains the moral authority it claimed since 2018. Let us remember that this authority rested on a clear premise: that the PSOE represented a power culture different from that of the previous cycle.
“The truly relevant question is another: can such a centralized leadership continue to demand a complete separation from the dynamics of its own political environment?”
That is why the debate about Sánchez should not be framed in simplistic terms of personal culpability. The truly relevant question is another: can such a centralized leadership continue to claim a complete separation from the dynamics of its own political environment? That is the big question.
Because the crisis of trust affecting Western democracies does not arise solely from corruption understood as crime. It also arises from the perception that political systems have weakened their internal control mechanisms while strengthening the power of increasingly dominant presidential figures.
The culpa in vigilando expresses exactly that contemporary anxiety. At the same time, it embodies the need for leaders to possess supervisory capacity, institutional culture, and responsibility over the power ecosystem they build around them.
In the absence of a viable motion of censure, the decision to call elections can only be taken by Pedro Sánchez. It will be he who determines when to return the microphone to the Spanish electorate to resolve the question that will define the next political cycle: whether the economic, social, and political gains still outweigh the risks, or whether trust in the wrong people ends his terms.
Courts will establish criminal liabilities where they exist, investigations will continue to delineate facts, and parliamentary majorities will set the pace. Nevertheless, political legitimacy is decided in another realm. Will the project that came to power invoking regeneration still carry enough authority to seek continuity? The answer, sooner or later, can only come from the citizenry.
