
A corruption scandal has once again hit an organizational secretary of the PSOE from within Pedro Sánchez’s inner circle. While the previous judicial investigations that targeted those around Sánchez — such as those on his wife Begoña Gómez and the state Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz — had a strong hint of lawfare, with no evidence, omissions, and flawed judicial theories, this time the investigation involving Santos Cerdán, organizational secretary of the PSOE since 2021 and a member of parliament, is supported by recordings that have been made public.
In the recordings, made by Koldo García Izaguirre, a key figure in the investigation who we will meet shortly, José Luis Ábalos, the former minister in the first two governments of Pedro Sánchez, first of Development and then of Transport and former organizational secretary of the PSOE, also appears, in addition to the latter and Cerdán.
From the audio, an accounting of the profits made through corruption for the awarding of contracts emerges, reported by the protagonists themselves. It is such a severe blow that for the first time the continuation of the government has been called into question.
Sánchez, who appeared at a press conference last Thursday with a humble and serious air, apologizing to the Spaniards and the party for having trusted Cerdán, seems to have regained strength in a new appearance this Monday, after a long Federal Committee, discarding both the option of a vote of confidence and that of a crisis and a government reshuffle.
Handing over the reins of the country to a coalition of the PP with Vox, who are pushing a reactionary agenda and who currently have thirty corruption trials pending, many of which involve current senior leaders, as is the case of the PP, or have been fined for illicit financing, as is the case of the far-right Vox, would be a tremendous irresponsibility,
he argued.
“The so-called Koldo Case is the only one of supposed corruption that has involved my organization since I have had the honor of leading it, because there is still no sentence,” added Sánchez. He then challenged the secretary of the PP, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, to present a motion of censure, the equivalent of a no-confidence vote, “if he believes he has the necessary support.” Sánchez also announced that the PSOE will promote a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the Koldo case and that it will collaborate with the judiciary and “will not destroy hard drives with hammers”, as people in the PP did to eliminate documentary evidence of corruption in the party in the Barcenás case. In that case the popular former treasurer had managed and redistributed the proceeds of corruption among the highest positions in the party. Following that scandal, in 2018 Pedro Sánchez presented a motion of censure, which won through the mechanism of constructive no confidence, and brought him to the government of the country for the first time.
In his speech, Sánchez apologized to women, referring to passages in the recordings with macho comments, references to choosing prostitutes and insults to the former Minister of Economy Nadia Calviño, currently President of the European Investment Bank, calling her a “gran hija de puta”, as well as contemptuous comments towards other members of the government and the party that are hostile to the three.
Me avergüenzo profundamente de los audios sobre las mujeres. Me repugnan esas conversaciones. No me representan
The investigation, led by Judge Leopoldo Puente, concerns alleged corruption in the awarding of public contracts and stems from another one involving Koldo García Izaguirre, a political consultant and the true linchpin of the storm that is engulfing the PSOE.
García Izaguirre comes from Navarra, where he had worked in security for clubs and discos. He was then a bodygurad, a common practice for those involved in security in the last years of ETA terrorism, before becoming a city councilor for the PSOE in the Navarre town of Huarte, between 2011 and 2015. That year he arrived in Madrid on the heels of Santos Cerdán, who placed him first alongside Ábalos as a driver and bodyguard, and then at the Ministry of Transportation as a consultant. From bouncer to bodyguard to ministerial consultant, in a meteoric career.
Koldo, along with ten other people, is being investigated in Operation Delorme (named after the French doctor de Lorme who first popularized the use of masks to prevent infections among hospital staff). They are accused of having set up a criminal plot to profit from the purchase of masks during the Covid-19 epidemic, a total of nine public contracts worth 54 million euros. The charge is that he took advantage of his personal relationships with authorities, public officials, the government and the PSOE to obtain contracts for the company Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas SL, obtaining cash commissions in exchange.
The investigation, also called the Ábalos Case, after José Luís Ábalos, the Minister of Development and Transportation in the first two Sánchez governments and organizational secretary of the party from 2017 to 2021, also implicated Cerdán when the recordings emerged.
When Koldo was arrested on February 20, 2024, along with nineteen other people including his wife and brother, Ábalos — who Sánchez had already removed from his organizational secretariat three years earlier and had not renewed him as a minister, perhaps suspecting something, but in any case having evidently lost confidence in him — under pressure due to his closeness to Koldo, resigned from his position as president of the Interior Committee, but refused to resign as a member of parliament, instead leaving the Socialist Group to join the Mixed Group. On October 23, the Audiencia Nacional asked the Supreme Court to investigate Ábalos for his role in the Koldo Case, and in November the Supreme Court opened proceedings against him on suspicion of corruption, embezzlement, influence peddling and organized crime.
Koldo García Izaguirre, who complained of having been abandoned and threatened with revelations, had recorded and stored a large amount of data and many conversations, both with Ábalos and Cerdán, separately or together. These were found on mobile devices seized during his detention by the Guardia Civil, which, after analyzing them, having to work around encryption for some, handed them over to the Supreme Court.
There are strong indications in these recording of Santos Cerdán’s involvement in the corruption plot, sufficient to lead to a formal indictment by the Supreme Court, according to the Spanish press citing judicial sources. Given his status as a deputy, he was invited by the judge to testify voluntarily. Cerdán’s lawyer, Gonzalo Martínez-Fresneda, who is close to the PSOE, announced today that Cerdán will appear before the judge on June 25, and that after he renounced his parliamentary mandate, which happened on Monday afternoon, the lawyer, a legal representative of the PSOE, would resign from the case.
For Pedro Sánchez, his government and the PSOE, this is a bombshell with unpredictable consequences. Thursday’s apologies are clearly not enough to respond to the opposition’s broadsides — the Partido Popular had gotten ahead of the game by calling a demonstration on Sunday 8 with the slogan “Democracy or Mafia” — nor to the concerns of party members, who see the specter of corruption reappearing in Felipe González’s PSOE. Even Monday’s renewed vigor falls short of addressing the difficulties.
Not only did Sánchez become head of government after presenting a motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy for the corruption scandals of the PP, but both Ábalos and Cerdán are part of his closest core group. Ábalos was Sánchez’s right-hand man in government and Cerdán was the same in the party. When Sánchez lost Ábalos in government, the legal problems that were coming for his ties with Koldo were already visible, putting Cerdán in his place.
Sánchez had complete confidence in the two, who had been Sanchistas from the very beginning, remaining at his side even in the most difficult moments, when the party ousted him to facilitate the birth of the latest government of Mariano Rajoy, which the then new socialist secretary opposed. Recently, Sánchez and the PSOE had staunchly defended Cerdán several times, so much so that the PSOE pointed at the work of the Guardia Civil as a possible bluff, inserted in the hostile campaigns against the executive by part of the judiciary and the state security apparatus.
El País revealed that Sánchez, once he learned of the contents of the police report, called Cerdán to tell him to his face that he had always been lying. But even the possibility that Sánchez was unaware is not an excuse: if anything, it is an aggravating factor for a political leader. So, what will happen now?
Meanwhile, Sánchez has designated an interim collective organizational secretariat to serve until the Federal Committee on July 5, composed of Cristina Narbona, the president, Ana Maria Fuentes, the party manager, Montse Mínguez, deputy of the Catalan Socialist Party and head of Labor and Social Economy of the PSOE, and Borja Cabezón, a member of the federal executive and head of Democratic Action and Transparency.
In addition to looking in to the various “delegations” that the secretary had given to Cerdán, including some important ones such as the meetings with Carles Puigdemont in Switzerland, the collective secretariat will have to suggest drastic measures to change the party organization and ensure that such events cannot happen again, and then lead the party in this dramatic situation.
Critical voices have been raised against Sánchez in the PSOE, even by people who have always supported him. Emiliano García-Page, president of Castilla y León and secretary of the Castilian party, has stood up publicly as the only critical voice in the party. He is very close to Felipe González, who has explicitly invited Sánchez to dissolve parliament.
The five-hour executive meeting on Monday featured numerous critical speeches, especially regarding Sánchez’s lack of control over the party. Several Socialist leaders have expressed the fear that the vote will coincide with the next local elections, but Sánchez has guaranteed that this will not happen because the legislature will reach the completion of its term and the vote will take place in 2027. In the end, Sánchez’s report, with the decision not to raise the question of a vote of confidence and not to proceed with reshuffling the party, was voted for unanimously.
Sánchez then wrote a letter to the PSOE membership, in which he took up the themes already used in recent days. “It is a wound that hurts all of us,” the secretary writes to the members, “but the difficult moment we are living through must not cause us to lose perspective.” “I know that the disappointment that this case entails is enormous. I am the first to ask for forgiveness for what it represents. But we must not forget where we come from and everything we have achieved in these years, including in the fight against corruption. We have increased the levels of transparency and made tougher laws. We have improved Spain’s position in international rankings of perception of the fight against corruption.” And then he concluded by encouraging the socialist people.
There are many issues that affect everyone’s life – healthcare, housing, pensions, employment, the fight against climate change and the defense of equality. Challenges that are being addressed […] with fair, modern and effective public policies for which we have had the confidence of the majority of Parliament. For all these challenges we move forward. With the same hope and desire as on the first day. Even more, if possible, because we socialists have always grown in adversity, giving the best of ourselves.
Demotivation and demobilization of party members and the electorate are the main danger for Sánchez. But not the only one. Resuming government activity, which has long been stalled due to mutual vetoes, is essential for him if he hopes to get to 2027 and present himself with any chancein the elections. Being able to present the state budget for 2026 is now more important than ever. Another possibility that is being discussed is that he could give up the leadership of the government to dedicate himself to the party. But one of the limits of Sanchism is the centrality of the leader himself. There is a lack of prominent figures who would be capable of successfully fulfilling his role.
Despite his intentions and renewed combativeness, Sánchez’s path, which so far has never been easy given the disengagement of Podemos and his dependence on the votes of the Catalan independentists, is fraught with unknowns. The government has not produced the budget estimate and the parliamentary majority that supports it has long been frayed. Perhaps the acceleration of the crisis will have the paradoxical result of reuniting it.
Sánchez himself will meet with the parties that make up the majority of the investiture that allows the establishment of the PSOE – Sumar minority government. This Tuesday he met with the Catalan nationalists of Junts, on Wednesday he will meet with the Esquerra republicana de Catalunya (Erc), Bildu, and the Partido nacionalista vasco (Pnv). On Monday there was a first meeting with Yolanda Díaz.
Sumar is in great difficulty and has no interest in going to the polls, where the parties it is composed of could be divided. Díaz has publicly called for pushing the government’s left-wing agenda and has announced a law that would exclude companies that have engaged in corrupt practices with public officials from the public procurement system for a decade. This is one of the issues that politicians and public officials pay the price for when scandals erupt, but which never happens to the representatives of the corrupt companies.
Junts and ERC do not look favorably on an immediate vote, the former because with a right-wing government it would risk losing amnesty and the latter because the polls have nothing good to say. The PNV is not in favor of elections any time soon either; President Aitor Esteban has ruled out toppling the government, accusing the media and Madrid politics of living in a self-referential bubble that “has no connection with reality”, but adding that “we cannot accept everything to avoid a right-wing government”. Izquierda Unida has made it known that it does not believe the government is compromised by corruption, and Bildu, the formation of left-wing Basque nationalists, seems unwilling to withdraw external support for the government. Podemos is the only party, apart from the right, that is pushing for elections. However, it has refused both a vote of confidence and to participate in a possible motion of no confidence by the right. Vox is pushing for such a motion, however it does not have the numbers to present it, while Feijóo’s PP is hesitating, partly because it is not sure it has the numbers either and partly to avoid its forced alliance with Vox being put under the spotlight.
Thus, this is the most difficult moment for Pedro Sánchez, who has regained the initiative but is sailing in very troubled waters. On June 25 and 26, the NATO general assembly, which Donald Trump will also participate in, will be held at The Hague. The US will ask that European defense spending reach 5 percent, a figure that is unacceptable for many European countries. How different the scenario has become from the triumphant Assembly in Madrid in June 2022. Back then, Mario Draghi was in difficulty. As Enric Juliana recalls in his bulletin Penínsulas, the photo of Draghi on the phone while they told him that his government was in crisis, while everyone else was celebrating in the splendid setting of the Prado Museum, went around the world. This time, the leader in crisis is Pedro Sánchez.
Cover image: screenshot from Pedro Sánchez’s statement on Thursday, June 12
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