The PP accuses Sánchez of "appropriating" the 'Guernica' and of "using public resources" for his pre-campaign for 29N: "Picasso would turn over in his grave"

The video of Pedro Sánchez in front of 'Guernica' has opened another confrontation with the PP in the pre-campaign for the general elections on November 29. The general secretary of the popular party, Miguel Tellado, has accused the president of using the Reina Sofía Museum to record an electoral advertisement, while Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo has raised the tone from an event in Toledo. "Even Picasso himself would turn over in his grave," said the PP's number two candidate for Madrid.

Tellado, also Alberto Núñez Feijóo's campaign director, responded directly to Sánchez's post on X. "You have to have some nerve," he wrote, before assuring that the museum had been opened exclusively for him and "to enlarge his ego." His reproach focuses on the facilities chosen for the recording and on the political use of a work that is part of public heritage.

"Once again, Sánchez abuses resources that belong to everyone and appropriates the Guernica to record an electoral pre-campaign commercial," states the popular leader. He closed his message with a reference to the ballot boxes, where he assures that "privilege as a way of doing politics will end". The exclusive opening he denounces must be distinguished from what the images of the president walking alone through the museum show, which by themselves do not allow knowing the conditions of the recording.

Álvarez de Toledo has presented the video as an instrumentalization of Picasso's painting. "Today, Pedro Sánchez this very morning published a video appropriating the 'Guernica'. He dirties everything he touches," she declared. She then accused the socialist candidate of making "spurious use" of the painting "in favor of a civil war supporter and an immoral person".

The deputy added a historical reproach. Sánchez, she said, had forgotten "to thank Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, of the UCD", under whose Government the painting arrived in Spain in September 1981. With that memory, the popular leader vindicated the role of the Transition Executive against the meaning that the president now attributes to the work.

The 'No to war' enters the 29N dispute

Sánchez has chosen one of the most recognizable symbols of the horror of war to defend his foreign policy and recover the "No to war". In the video released this Saturday, the president maintains that the painting represents "what happens when barbarism prevails over reason" and claims that Spain has maintained the same principles in international conflicts, "without double standards".

The socialist candidate links that message with his rejection of raising military spending to 5% of GDP at the expense of the welfare state and with the denunciation of the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. "When some were betting on bombs, we said no to war," he states, before defending that "no life is worth less than another" and that looking the other way should not be an option.

Five weeks before the elections, the video allows Sánchez to claim an international position with which he seeks to mobilize the progressive electorate. The PP's response places the discussion on the use of public resources and shared symbols, without developing a reply to his arguments about the conflicts. It is a controversy with two different levels, the content of the message and the conditions in which a president who aspires to re-election uses a public museum to disseminate it.

The history of the painting precisely brings together its anti-war meaning and its link with Spanish democracy. Picasso painted it in 1937, after the bombing of Gernika, and conditioned its return from MoMA in New York to the recovery of freedoms in Spain. It arrived in Madrid on September 10, 1981, during the Calvo-Sotelo Government, after negotiations in which Javier Tusell and diplomat Rafael Fernández Quintanilla participated. It was first exhibited in the Casón del Buen Retiro and moved to the Reina Sofía in 1992.