Judge Juan Carlos Peñado fired three senior officials in La Moncloa to appoint Begonia Gomez as advisor. And three times there was no success. The latest setback to his controversial judicial instructions ended the same events, when the regional public in Madrid was informed that he had ordered the dismissal of Francisco Martín Aguirre, the current government delegate to the Community of Madrid, who had kept a low profile for more than half a year after admitting to the processing of a Fox complaint against him for an alleged crime of malpractice. “There are no minimum indicators,” concludes the hearing on Martin Aguirre. It also asked the Supreme Court to reject his petition against Minister Felix Bolaños.
Since Peñado proposed in March of this year to escalate his case to La Moncloa (to open an independent line of investigation into the crime of malpractice, which after the public forced him to consolidate the rest of the process), the judge has set his sights on the three secretaries-general of the presidency who took over the government of Pedro Sánchez: Felix Bolaños (2018-2021), Francisco Martín Aguirre. (2021-2023) and Judit Alexandra Gonzalez (in office since 2023). Peñado attributed the latter and tried to get the Supreme Court to do the same to Bolaños, against whom he could not act because he was out of office and currently serving as a minister.
The Secretary General of the Presidency is not just any position. He has a lot of weight in La Moncloa. On the ground, he forms part of the team closest to the CEO, the bell in the government engine room who coordinates the contents of cabinets.
The judge began making the rounds last March 10, when he agreed to open a line of investigation into malpractices and ordered the citation and declaration of current Minister Bolaños, who was Secretary General of the Presidency when Cristina Alvarez was appointed in 2018 as Begonia Gomez’s advisor. The judge upheld that the assistant helped Pedro Sanchez’s wife with her private activities and, according to the summary, considered that La Moncloa agreed to allow him to do so.
However, Peñado has now failed in all his attempts to attribute this alleged misconduct to a high government position. In April, he questioned Bolaños as a witness and told him that he was not involved in the appointment of Cristina Alvarez. Then, without being able to blame the minister for leaving office, the judge decided to direct the case against his successor, Francisco Martín Aguirre, who resigned as Secretary General in 2023 to become delegate of the executive in Madrid, where he gained a starring role as a critical voice with Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the independent president.
Citing him as an accused after accepting a complaint from the Vox party against him, the judge said that he contacted Martín Aguirre because he was “the official and superior of Álvarez” and because he had “clear participation in her appointment” to “exercise the special duties of Begonia Gómez responsible for his public assumptions in the state.” Therefore, amid enormous media expectations, in May the government delegate sat down before Peñado to explain that he had not been involved in this appointment; And that he assumed the position of Secretary General of the Presidency three years after he was chosen as an assistant to Sanchez’s wife; In addition, he received no warning of problems with his functions.
I have in no way followed your explanations and continue as entered until updated. From today, the beginning of November, he began dropping the case against him. According to the coach, there is evidence that Martin Aguirre committed the crime of malpractice due to his “negative behavior” in “preventing a subordinate from working only for those to whom he was nominated.” “I did not perform the duties of supervision and control over Cristina Alvarez,” the judge said. But, precisely at the moment when Martin de Aguirre’s accusation was heard, the Madrid public revealed that there were no indications on the table that the Secretary General of the Presidency was then assigned the “function of monitoring” the activities of Cristina Álvarez; That he participates in the violations; I didn’t know that Gomez’s advisor could be so over-the-top in her work. The accusations were “merely hypothetical”, according to the court’s apostille.
Martín Aguirre was in charge of Moncloa who had long held Peñado under this expectation. But it was not his only goal. In June, the trained judge asked the Supreme Court to credit Bolaños with the following: “He was able to directly participate in the candidacy of the character of Cristina Alvarez as a personal show and knew or did not control the tasks he performed himself,” the judge wrote in a statement sent to the Supreme Court, which was rejected within a few days. In a scathing way, the highest judiciary points to the “absolute absence of any indication that is even minimally grounded or has a minimal possibility of involvement” of the Minister in this alleged malpractice: “The mere seizure of a public office and the development of its functions cannot assume an automatic and objective attribution of the conduct of the seizure of public heritage, nor is it an omission that allows another person to seize it.”
She completed her hairstyle last November, when it was attributed to the current Secretary General of the Presidency, Judit Alexandra Gonzalez. When he stated that he was under investigation, the judge did not know the details had been changed so that it was now necessary to include him on the list of suspects. The high office came to its court to announce Sunday, November 16th. New, amid huge media hype. After listening to her, the judge came forward and on the same day filed the lawsuit against her. This declaration was confirmed the next day by a hearing decision. He just devoted a paragraph to talking about his quick turnaround in the Gonzalez case: “It is fully believed that the investigation was not involved in the crime of squandering public funds.”