José Luis Albalos’s radical change in his defense strategy, where he even left recorded interviews in which he accuses, without providing any evidence, Begonia Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, of participating in the rescue of Air Europa, has provoked an angry reaction from the government, which feels itself the victim of an attack on its image and that of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which was greatly affected after the former Secretary of the Socialist Organization and former Minister of Development went to prison. “The Socialist Workers Party and this government will never allow blackmail by anyone. And Mr. Abalos knows that,” said First Vice President María Jesús Montero, believing that “everything responds to a defensive strategy” of the former heavyweight of the executive, the Socialists and his trusted person, Koldo García, “who try to involve other people, especially when they are politicians, believing that it can benefit them in terms of their sentences.”
The second-in-command in the government and the Socialist Workers’ Party expressed her regret for the attack carried out by her colleague in the Cabinet between June 2018 and July 2021 in order to “impose innocent people with lies and deceit because they believe that they will reach a better agreement on their sentence.” He explained during an event held in Libriga (Seville): “I am worried that this will happen, because although the truth always ends up proving the truth, there is a flaw in the news of people who are mentioned without any justification and without any evidence.”
Montero insisted on how the PSOE “from day one” would provide all the clarifications after the corruption scandal, initially called the Koldu Affair, broke out in February 2024 and was renamed the “Koldu Affair.” Abalos case and Santos Cerdan caseafter the alleged involvement of Abalos’ successor in the organization’s secretariat in a bribery-for-public works awards scheme. Cerdan was released on Wednesday last week after 142 days in temporary prison. On Thursday, Abalos and Garcia were admitted to the same prison where they were being held, Soto del Real, near the Madrid mountains.
The First Deputy Prime Minister indicated that the party asked Abalos for his deputy’s testimony and how when he refused to give up his seat, he was expelled from the mixed group. The PSOE agreed to the former third man’s precautionary suspension as a militant immediately, but Serdan paralyzed his eventual expulsion until he too fell last June after a report from the Central Operations Unit of the Civil Guard revealed his role in the corrupt network.
The PSOE once again called on Abalos to resign from his position as deputy, deploring the defense strategy “based on lies and defamation” pursued by Abalos and García. In the days before the hearing in the Supreme Court, where Judge Leopoldo Puente discussed the “extreme” risk of escape and possible hidden money for sentencing him to prison, Abalos and García stated, without providing evidence, that Sánchez met with Arnaldo Otegui in a small village to obtain the support of the two EH Bildu deputies for the censure motion against Mariano Rajoy. Support for the nationalist left was not necessary; The SWP devoted itself to obtaining the positive vote of the PNV, on which the success of the operation depended. The party stated in a statement, “The Socialist Party will not spend another minute denying their lies. Their behavior has harmed this organization and their baseless accusations only respond to a defensive stance that seeks to reduce their responsibility to justice.”
The government insists that despite the crisis, which coincides with the parliamentary weakness of the executive that clearly demonstrated the rejection of the stabilization path in Congress, with votes against Gontz and Podemos and Kompromes abstaining, there will be no electoral progress. Elma Saez concluded her speech by saying: “We have reached the halfway point of the legislature. The legislatures have lasted four years.” The Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Immigration was struck by the idea that “people come to politics to serve, not to use politics,” in contrast to Abalos, whose image entered Soto del Real “a year ago” and torpedoed the “profession of public service” of members of the government. “I listen to my children, my parents and my friends, and there are times when I don’t have answers when they ask me ‘look at what’s happening’. I tell them that we are not all the same and I tell them that we do not all act the same way. And unlike others (for the People’s Party) we act strongly from the first minute, regardless of who falls and with a strict commitment to strict compliance with the law,” he said on RTVE. “You cannot put an accused person, who can freely post on social networks or give interviews according to the strategy he sees fit, on the same level as the truth,” she added after being asked about the shade cast by Abalos regarding the Air Europa rescue.
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albarez insisted not to interfere with justice and to facilitate its work. “There is a judicial investigation underway, it’s time for justice, let’s work on it calmly. Justice must rule,” he told RNE after getting as far away from Albalos as possible. “We never agreed in the Cabinet,” said Albares, who was appointed to reshuffle the government in the summer of 2021, as Abalos abruptly left the executive branch.