Sawt Falasteen - Spain's Pedro Sanchez: a risk-taker with a flair for survival

"I have learned to push myself until the referee blows the final whistle," wrote the Socialist prime minister and former basketball player in his 2019 autobiography, "Resistance Manual".

After five years in power, he caught everyone off guard by calling the snap vote just hours after the left suffered a major drubbing in May local and regional elections.

Polls predicted the conservative Popular Party (PP) and far-right Vox would win a working majority, but instead the election resulted in a hung parliament.

This offers Sanchez, whose Socialists finished second behind the PP, a chance to cling on to power through a jigsaw of alliances.

"He adopts very, very risky strategies," University of Granada political science professor Giselle Garcia Hipola told AFP, adding Sanchez "has a very acute political antennae".

With a charming smile and affable personality, Sanchez -- often called "Mr Handsome" at the start of his career -- has been written off politically on several occasions, only to bounce back.

- Written off, bounces back -

Sanchez emerged from obscurity in 2014 as a little-known MP to seize the reins of Spain's oldest political party.

A leap-year baby born in Madrid on February 29, 1972, Sanchez grew up in a well-off family, the son of an entrepreneur father and civil servant mother.

He studied economics before getting a Master's degree in political economy at the Free University of Brussels and a doctorate from a private Spanish university.

Elected to the party leadership in 2014, Sanchez was written off politically after leading the Socialists to their worst-ever electoral defeats in 2015 and 2016.

Ejected from the leadership, Sanchez unexpectedly won his job back in a primary in May 2017 after a cross-country campaign in his 2005 Peugeot to rally support.

Within barely a year, he took over as premier in June 2018 after an ambitious gamble that saw him topple conservative Popular Party leader Mariano Rajoy in a no-confidence vote.

- 'Survivor' -

Always immaculately suited and booted, this telegenic politician -- who likes running and looms over his rivals at 1.9 metres (6 foot 2 inches) tall -- has made a name for himself as stubborn and tenacious.

Over the past five years, he has had to play a delicate balancing act to stay in power.

In February 2019, the fragile alliance of left-wing factions and pro-independence Basque and Catalan parties that had catapulted him to the premiership cracked, prompting him to call early elections.

Although his Socialists won, they fell short of an absolute majority, and Sanchez was unable to secure support to stay in power, so he called a repeat election later that year.

Forced into a marriage of convenience with the hard-left Podemos, despite much gnashing of teeth inside his own party, Sanchez has managed to stay in power despite his coalition holding only a minority in parliament.

"He's had to adapt to different situations," said Paloma Roman, a political scientist at Madrid's Complutense University, describing the father of two teenage girls as "pragmatic" and "politically flexible".

"He's a survivor... who has made some mistakes" and taken some controversial decisions, but who "has good political acumen" and who has shown himself, on more than one occasion, "capable of getting himself out of tricky situations", she added.

Spain's first premier to be fluent in English, Sanchez pushed a raft of reforms clearly rooted in the left during his time in office and oversaw a government with the highest-ever number of women.

W.AbuLaban--SF-PST