A Peugeot 607 toured Spain in 2017 seeking endorsements for the PSOE primaries, transporting three men with… Pedro Sanchez: Santos Cerdan, Jose Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia.
This was the solid core that surrounded the president practically throughout his political career. Even before he reached the position of Secretary General of the Socialist Socialist Workers’ Party in 2014.
Eight years later, one of them has already gone to prison, and two others were accepted yesterday, accused of very serious corruption crimes.
The fourth, the president himself, continues to transmit from the Palace of MoncloaAs if none of this had anything to do with it.
José Luis Abalos and Koldo Garcia entered the Soto del Real prison yesterday by order of a Supreme Court judge Leopoldo Puentewhich assessed a “high risk of flight” due to the proximity of the trial in which the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office requested 24 years in prison for the former minister and 19 and a half years for his former advisor.
Santos Cerdan, the third passenger in that car, He had left the same prison just eight days earlier, after five months behind bars..
The status landmark was emphatic. Even when penalties are applied to the legal minimum, the ultimate penalty will be no less than twelve years and six months in prison.
Meanwhile, Pedro Sanchez remains silent.
When reporters tried to get some answers from the president yesterday, Thursday, after an official event, Sanchez avoided responding.
For its part, his government merely reiterates that it has “zero tolerance for corruption” and that Abalos was expelled from the party. As if political responsibility could be resolved with a statement from Ferraz.
It is difficult to overstate the exceptional nature of the Spanish situation. The Prime Minister prosecuted two former secretaries of the organization (the party’s former second-in-command) on charges of membership in a criminal organization, bribery, influence peddling, and embezzlement.
his wife, Begonia gomez,charged.
His brother faces trial.
The Supreme Court convicted its prosecutor after participating in a dirty political war aimed at destruction Isabel Diaz Ayuso.
And Koldo Garcia, the trusted man who has been guarding his support since the primaries, and who led him to the secret meeting with… Arnaldo Otegi To approve the motion for censure against Mariano Rajoyprepares his defense of the dungeon.
Moreover, Jose Luis Albalos almost explicitly accused President Begonia Gomez’s wife yesterday, Thursday, in an interview with the newspaper the worldpersonally involved in bribery: bailing out the airline Air Europe.
Some statements merit, at a minimum, the responsible judge calling Abalos to testify so that he can determine the details and present evidence to support the accusation.
In any established democracy around us, even one of these scandals would have led to the irrevocable resignation of the president.
In Germany, some ministers resigned due to the theft of doctoral theses.
In France to employ family members.
In the UK, for lying about a party during quarantine.
in spain, The president, whose inner circle is filled with investigative courts, considers that none of this concerns him.
Alberto Nunez Viejo He put it crudely yesterday. “100% of the clan that accompanied Sanchez when he returned to politics ended up in prison. Sanchez is not surrounded by bad apples; he is the bad apple.” Feijóo then called for a protest demonstration this Sunday.
Even among the socialists, it was said that they in the Socialist Workers’ Party were “already crying” over yesterday’s news, Thursday, considering that the scandals had been extinguished as if they had occurred within another party, in a parallel world.
What is truly worrying is not corruption per se, but rather a phenomenon that has affected all parties in a democracy.
What is disturbing is the refusal of the radical, stubborn and completely undemocratic president to take any responsibility.. Consolidating him in power.
The principle that a president can protect himself indefinitely while tightening the judicial siege on those who helped him rise to power is an anomaly that degrades our institutions.
Judge Puente’s order includes a phrase worth pondering: “Belonging to state authority does not exempt us from criminal responsibilities and does not abolish the principle of equality before the law.”
No one has charged the president criminally yet.
But political responsibility operates on different criteria. Most demanding of those in the highest position of executive power.
Spain has been a democracy for 47 years. No president has ever faced a remotely similar situation.
Sánchez’s intention to treat this crisis as if the problem belonged to others (judges, the media, the opposition, people with whom he no longer has any relationship) reveals a concept of power that is incompatible with the standards we set for ourselves as a nation and as members of the European Union.
The Peugeot primaries have hit the final wall of systemic corruption. But one of its residents He refuses to get off, clinging to the steering wheel, while the engine threatens to explode.