This week, two trials are set to begin in Madrid that will undoubtedly have a significant impact on Spanish politics. This Monday, the trial for the Kitchen case kicks off at the National High Court, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will try the former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, for the first case affecting him: an alleged scheme to collect commissions for selling masks to various state institutions.
The Kitchen case, however, is very different from the episodes of corruption to which we are unfortunately accustomed. What is being judged are the state's dirty dealings: the accused, including the former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz, are held responsible for having set up a kind of parallel police force within the National Police that operated outside the law and for political purposes. The so-called patriotic police was involved in the dirty war against separatism and also against Podemos, but in the Kitchen case, the circumstance is that what was intended was to prevent sensitive documentation for the PP in the possession of Luis Bárcenas from falling into the hands of the judicial agents investigating the Gürtel case. In other words, from within the Ministry of the Interior itself, work was being done against justice, boycotting an investigation that could have been fatal for the then ruling party, as we are talking about the year 2013.
As in other matters, the mission fell to former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who recruited Bárcenas' driver and his wife to gain access to the inner workings of his home –hence the name Kitchen–, bribing him with money from the secret funds of the Ministry of the Interior. Because, of course, the entire operation was carried out on the orders of Fernández Díaz, author of famous phrases like "The Prosecutor's Office will fix this for you," as part of the dirty war against independence.
It is difficult to imagine a more flagrant violation of the rule of law than using the resources of the Ministry of the Interior and the police to protect the party in power in a clear case of corruption. But in reality, what the Kitchen case demonstrates is the proprietary conception that the Spanish right has of the State. And on this occasion, there wasn't even the patriotic excuse of fighting against independence or communism, but rather one of the main corruption cases in Spanish democratic history was simply being covered up. In fact, let's remember that it was the sentence in the Gürtel case that led to the motion of no confidence that brought Pedro Sánchez to La Moncloa.
For now, the PP has not yet offered a coherent explanation for these events, nor for the Gürtel case, nor for the Bárcenas papers
. Pablo Casado announced that, once it was confirmed that the PP's headquarters in Génova had been paid for with dirty money, a new one would have to be found. But with Feijóo, this idea has been buried. And evidently, Mariano Rajoy, Dolores de Cospedal, and Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría will say they knew nothing. But this trial should serve to show the true nature of the PP.
