Margarita Robles: the singular figure in the Government of Pedro Sánchez

Margarita Robles was the first to stop applauding on Thursday when the entire blue bench was still standing in Congress cheering for the president. She realized that she was the only one sitting and ended up resuming the ovation for commitment. Minutes before, his discomfort had been evident when Pedro Sánchez announced that he would turn the cards face up and publish all the reports on the Ceuta crisis, that is, that everyone will be able to draw their own conclusions in the war of versions of the Minister of Defense and the head of the Interior regarding the CNI warnings.

That Robles was ungovernable was written in many chronicles when Pedro Sánchez announced that he was signing her as number two on the PSOE list in Madrid, back in 2016. At that time, every gesture of the socialist leader was a challenge for his critics and there were PSOE veterans who stirred, remembering her role as Secretary of State for the Interior with the investigation of the dirty war of the GAL in the final stretch of Felipe González. He embarked with Sánchez on the “no means no” to Mariano Rajoy, broke voting discipline along with 14 other PSOE deputies and ended up being spokesperson for the socialist group after the primary battle when his boss did not have a seat. She, who is a judge, was the first one that Sánchez called the day the Gürtel ruling came out that ended up justifying the motion of censure.

Robles was already there when Sanchismo's star signings arrived, including judge Fernando Grande-Marlaska; and Sánchez already knew to whom he entrusted the Ministry of Defense with the CNI included, a novelty in the organizational chart that raised eyebrows because it meant stripping the vice presidency of Carmen Calvo of the power that Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría had had. When Sánchez became president he already knew the legend that Robles locked himself in the bathroom to talk on the phone with some journalists and, before his 100 days in La Moncloa, he already disavowed it for the first time due to the stoppage of a sale of bombs to Saudi Arabia. He had gone on his own as would happen many times later. In the heat of the leaks of the president's private conversations, a comment he made to José Luis Ábalos was published among jokes: “She's a bird.”

Sánchez has had it by his side in the great battle in NATO over defense spending, maintaining that Spain complies despite Donald Trump's attacks, and he has done everything, in a very bitter political environment, with the Armed Forces on his side. Respect in that area has been earned from close proximity, visiting detachments every other day. She is the only minister whom all of Spain has seen skin to skin with the people of Ceuta. Both in Ceuta and in that flooded parking lot in Valencia after the damage, Robles has dared to hold the hand and look in the face of those who shout at the Government and has known how to play the card of his popularity like no one else in times of fury and polarization.