Santos Cerdán ordered his PSOE team to authorize all trips requested by Leire Díez

MadridA new report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, to which ARA has had access, underpins the alleged leadership role that Santos Cerdán would have exercised in the Leire Díez case. The National Court is investigating an alleged "criminal structure" to "obstruct" judicial proceedings. The document, 107 pages long, reinforces the existing evidence and, among other things, includes a report on the "management of travel expenses" relating to Santos Cerdán and other members of his team in 2024 and 2025, which was prepared by the PSOE and handed over to the UCO three weeks ago. "He gave verbal instructions to his support staff to authorize any trip requested by Leire Díez in such a way that she personally communicated with the Secretariat staff to request trips," states the report prepared by Santiago Llorente, coordinator of the party's management.

The UCO also provides emails from the travel agency that works for the socialists, which attest to the requests made by a PSOE employee to buy flights for Leire Díez. "It is a direct «order» from the Secretary of Organization. I don't know anything else... Please issue it when you have authorization," said Covadonga San Pedro Pascual, who worked at Ferraz. The PSOE also provided details of the trips it paid for the investigated individuals: seven flights for Leire are recorded – from Madrid to Bilbao, from Santander to Madrid, and from Santander to Jerez de la Frontera – and a round-trip train journey she took with businessman Javier Pérez Dolset from Madrid to Zaragoza.

will have to appear to testify on June 25The "breaches"

On the other hand, among the documentation belonging to Santos Cerdán, the Civil Guard has located a printed paper that corresponds to the document on non-compliance that was on Leire Díez's laptop. There are non-compliance issues related to José Manuel Villarejo, Francisco Martínez, or Gonzalo Boye. "The fact that this document was found in Santos Cerdán's possession clearly shows the accountability provided by Leire, considering it relevant that this document alludes to many of the lines of action developed by Leire," argues the UCO.

Besides the references to the retired commissioner of the Spanish police and Fernández Díaz's second-in-command, the document also makes references to Carles Puigdemont's lawyer: "The prosecutors have not followed the instructions not to continue offering agreements to defendants for attempted homicide against three police officers so that they would incriminate Boye," the document stated. The lawyer continues to await the sentence in the Sito Miñanco case, for which he was tried a year ago at the National Court. Among the issues to which to pay "special attention" were prosecutor José Grinda, whom they presented as the one behind "all the cases of the patriotic police and the cases of Catalonia," and Alejandro Luzón, the chief prosecutor of Anti-Corruption, who – among other things – is in charge of the hydrocarbons case.

A report on the Catalan elections

The Civil Guard's report also slightly splashes Catalonia. The PSOE provided the UCO with three reports prepared by Zaño, "supposedly framed" within the provision of services of the contract they had signed with a quarterly duration from July 1 to September 30, 2024. One of them, dated July and August, was about the Catalan elections and is the only one that –according to the armed institute– fits within the temporal framework of the contract, given that the other two – on the European elections and the federal congress's political action strategy – are earlier. Likewise, the Civil Guard highlights the "temporal proximity" between the invoices that the PSOE paid to Zaño and the salaries that Leire collected for her "labor relationship" with Zaño. In both cases, there were four payments. Leire Díez received 4,000 euros, but the total cost of the hiring amounted to 7,505 euros: "It is particularly significant that it coincides exactly".

"I'm more valuable for what I keep quiet than for what I say"

Just this morning, El Correo publishes a brief interview with Leire Díez. "I know much more than what appears in the agendas they have been able to take, I have always been worth more for what I keep quiet than for what I say", says the one known as the PSOE's "plumber", who struggles to return to her life: "I just want to get my life back, be with my goats in Vega de Pas and be left alone". She also talks about Pedro Sánchez: she denies ever having been with him and reproaches him that the "problem" he has is that "everyone is terrified because no one dares to tell him anything". She believes they are "using her as a spanner" to reach the Spanish president and considers that the PSOE has made a mistake in how to respond to the judicial siege that surrounds her: "I don't know if he has a rabbit in his hat or not, but they have absolutely and absurdly made the wrong strategy".

Likewise, she reiterates that she has "absolutely clear" that "nothing is a crime" and maintains that all of this is part of a "much deeper war than it seems". In this regard, Santos Cerdán has once again defended his innocence when he went to sign at the courts of Tafalla, as he does every fifteen days: "I have done nothing illegal, nor is there any plot. I hope that justice will clarify it soon".

ERC requests explanations and Junts, elections

Faced with new information in the Leire case, Esquerra, one of Sánchez's investiture partners, has urged the Spanish president to provide explanations to "dispel doubts." In fact, the party's general secretary, Elisenda Alamany, has considered it "inadmissible" that Sánchez has not done so until now — he is scheduled to appear on June 24. "Less jewelry and more explanations," she stressed.

For its part, Junts has raised its tone over the jewelry photos of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and its spokesperson, Josep Rius, has assured that "the different cases affecting the PSOE [...], are much more than a simple offensive by the judicial right": "They are a moral sentence for a left that preaches certain values, but applies others." The spokesperson insisted on an early election because the Spanish executive "can no longer take it anymore."