Begoña Gómez was in Beijing with her husband when the ruling dropped. The timing was almost operatic — Spain’s prime minister on a state visit to China, projecting statesmanship, while back home a judge signed off on four criminal charges against his wife. The image of Pedro Sánchez at Tsinghua University urging Beijing to help end wars while his domestic political foundation crumbled may be the defining photograph of his premiership.

Schröder’s Agenda 2010 was one of the most consequential reform packages in modern German politics, and it remains one of the most disputed. Announced by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2003, the program was designed to drag Germany out of a long period of economic weakness marked by high unemployment, weak growth, and a labor market that had come to look rigid, slow, and expensive. At the time, Germany was often described as the “sick man of Europe,” a label that captured both economic frustration and a broader sense that the country’s postwar model was struggling to adapt to globalization, demographic pressure, and intensified competition inside the European Union.