The Leire case and the PSOE's discomfort

BarcelonaWhen the impact of the indictment of former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has not yet faded, the Leire case, which investigates an alleged plot to torpedo judicial cases affecting government members or those close to Pedro Sánchez, threatens to become a ticking time bomb against the PSOE. In the last few hours, we have seen how the summary has forced the socialists to qualify or directly rectify previous statements. Now, for example, it can no longer be claimed that Leire Díez was nobody in the PSOE, when we know that she met with Santos Cerdán 22 times; that she entered Ferraz normally; that she spoke with the party president, Cristina Narbona, and that she met up to three times with the director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González.

The fact that Narbona had previously denied knowing her and that the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, had denied any meeting with González only increases suspicions about how many people within the PSOE were aware of Díez's maneuvers. The accumulation of evidence against the PSOE's plumber is of such magnitude that the current party leaders have decided to accept the summary's theses and attack her, Cerdán, and some other involved parties, calling them "hypocrites and resentful," but it is not entirely understood why trust is maintained in some of the indicted, such as the party manager. The only line of defense left for the PSOE is to claim that Pedro Sánchez knew nothing about it, as he himself wanted to make clear this Friday, and that the mistake was putting the party in the hands of someone like Santos Cerdán (and previously José Luis Ábalos).

However, that such a clumsy operation was launched against cases with a whiff of lawfare like the one affecting Sánchez's brother does not mean that this lawfare does not exist. These days we are witnessing a criminal trial for a case, that of the alleged fraudulent hiring of Sánchez's brother at the Diputació de Badajoz, which should go through the administrative route. Especially since the evidence of the adulteration of the tender is conspicuous by its absence and the Prosecutor's Office is requesting acquittal. It is also surprising that in this and other cases affecting the PSOE, it is the same person, the head of the UCO, Antonio Balas, who is taking the lead.

That the Civil Guard is eager to turn the Leire case into a general cause against the PSOE is demonstrated by the fact that they have asked the judge for all the banking and tax information of the party since 2024. They also wanted that of the PSC, which they are trying to involve with an advertising campaign that is actually from the PSOE, but the judge has decided to leave the Catalan socialists out of the investigation for the moment.

Therefore, we are faced with a judicial landscape in which it is very difficult to distinguish the wheat from the chaff and in which, alongside solid indications, there are biased readings by judges and police officers who, invariably, seem to respond to the famous Aznarian instruction of "whoever can, do it".