Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría remembers nothing related to the Kitchen

MadridNeither Mariano Rajoy nor María Dolores de Cospedal and now Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría neither do they remember anything about Operation Kitchen. This Monday it was the turn of the former Spanish vice president, who testified as a witness in the National Court, exhibiting memory problems similar to those of the former PP president. "I don't remember it" was the phrase she repeated most in an interrogation that lasted barely a quarter of an hour. Sáenz de Santamaría, who was also spokesperson for Rajoy's executive between 2011 and 2016, stated that she had "no knowledge whatsoever" of this operation during her time in government.

Everything she has learned about the espionage of Luis Bárcenas, former PP treasurer, has been through the press, she assured. However, she also did not remember the first publications that came out about this matter, in 2015. "I suppose I must have read them, but I don't remember." Sáenz de Santamaría did not live up to the nickname of Almighty that was attributed to her when she was in government and assured that she had no information related to investigations or the use of secret funds in the Ministry of the Interior because it was not her responsibility. "I was Minister of the Presidency, not of the Interior," she argued. She also denied having investigated or that Rajoy had shown interest in the matter with her or that the two main defendants —the former Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, and his former number two, Francisco Martínez— had passed information to her.

Unlike Cospedal, the PP's general secretary from 2008 to 2018, Sáenz de Santamaría has never been investigated. "Publicly, there was talk of a tense situation between you and Cospedal. Was it true?", asked Gloria de Pascual, the lawyer for the popular prosecution brought by the PSOE, with the aim of finding out if this tension was caused by disagreements in managing the PP's corruption scandals. "I never had any strategy of any kind regarding the Gürtel", replied Sáenz de Santamaría, who said she was unaware of what Cospedal had, "if she had any". She also said she did not know that the then PP general secretary met with former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who is also in the dock.

In fact, Sáenz de Santamaría has distanced herself from Villarejo's accusations, who, in statements to the media at the start of the trial, pointed to her and the National Intelligence Center (CNI), which at that time was attached to the Ministry of the Presidency. "Let her explain what the CNI was doing in this operation," he challenged her. The former vice president has denied having any knowledge of the CNI's participation in the surveillance of Bárcenas and has also said that she was not aware that the intelligence services were pursuing any investigation against Villarejo or that they had "animosity" towards him.

Rajoy's alleged audio

The first witness of the day was Guillermo Bárcenas, son of the former PP treasurer, who confirmed his father's version that implicates Rajoy when he explained that in 2013, about a month before he went to prison, his father told him that he had recorded a conversation with Rajoy about the PP's slush fund in the presence of Javier Arenas. However, Guillermo Bárcenas said he never got to hear it. Arenas testified shortly after and said that he had no knowledge of any of the conversations he had with the former treasurer being recorded and that the party tried to recover any compromising audio.

This member of Rajoy's PP leadership denied having "any unease" about it, distanced himself, and stressed that he was in charge of regional and local affairs. Arenas is still an active politician and currently serves as a senator with a position in Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP leadership —as secretary-general of the PP parliamentary group in the Senate–. Just as Rajoy did, Arenas has lent a hand to the two main defendants and assured that they are "great professionals of public administration at the service of Spaniards".