The director of the Civil Guard presents herself as a "victim" of Santos Cerdán

MadridNew day with all eyes on the National Court, where the Director General of the Civil Guard has returned to testify as an investigated person for prevarication and obstruction of justice within the framework of the Leire Díez case. Her name surfaced after the Central Operational Unit (UCO) discovered that she had met with the so-called "plumber from the PSOE. Although she has distanced herself from the outset from the alleged plot to torpedo judicial investigations, the judge charged her after the Prosecutor's Office suspected that he made a "repeated and diverted use" of disciplinary power as a "pressure mechanism" to "obstruct or alter" the "freedom" of investigators.

Now, before Santiago Pedraz, according to what ARA has been able to learn, he stated that he is on the “list of victims” of Santos Cerdán, who was number three in the party and with whom he had a bad relationship, and assured that if he had known that Leire Díez was contacting her on his behalf, he would have refused to receive her. He added that he has nothing to do with the circle under suspicion and reiterated that he did not participate in maneuvers to halt judicial proceedings concerning the PSOE circle. Furthermore, he downplayed the activation of temporary messages in the WhatsApp conversation with her – days after he internally admitted that he knew about the plumber of the PSOE– alleging that he also uses it with other people.

Although the armed institute's report details three meetings between Mercedes González and Leire Díez, the director of the Civil Guard only acknowledges two meetings. When she appeared in the Senate, he said that they were a “simple get-to-know-you” over coffee and made it clear that the then PSOE militant “never” asked him to “slow down or hinder” any investigation. At the first meeting, in September 2024, Díez congratulated her on her appointment as director of the armed institute. The second time they met, in April 2025, he asked her to reinstate Rubén Villalba, the commander investigated in the Koldo case, and she decided to end the conversation.

The DAO appears before the Senate

In parallel to Mercedes González's statement before the judge, her number two appeared at the Koldo case commission in the Senate. The deputy operational director of the Civil Guard, Manuel Llamas, went there 24 hours after the appointment at the National Court, where he denied having pressured the UCO. Now he has had time to explain himself publicly at length about the suspicions surrounding him. Regarding his continuation in office, he alleged that he has not resigned due to "consistency" with the defense of his "innocence" and assured that he will make a decision when he understands that his honor "has been reasonably questioned."

“Staying on the sidelines”

A witness assures that the DAO told UCO investigators to "stand aside" in cases with political impact, but he has denied it: "I do not recognize myself in this expression if it means stepping aside to avoid investigating, inhibiting myself from my responsibilities [...] or doing absolutely nothing, it has never been my style". He has questioned the testimonies that incriminate him and has lamented that the suspicions about him are an "extraordinary spiral".

Not being proactive

The other accusation against her is having invited the UCO agents not to be proactive. She has admitted saying this, but has downplayed its importance: “I'm tired of saying that the investigator is the judge, not us. Sometimes there is an excess of protagonism and a certain vanity and we assume papers or roles that do not correspond to us,” she justified. She considers that the Civil Guard investigators cannot have “so much proactivity” that they “steal the direction of the investigation” from the examining magistrate.

Marlaska's call

He reported that the director of the Civil Guard warned him that Begoña Gómez's email had been leaked in a report on the case of Pedro Sánchez's brother and, subsequently, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, called him, not to urge him to investigate it, but to give him a “dimension” of “the scope and impact” of this “slip-up” and of “the pernicious effect” it had had: “The emails had been bombed and filled with all sorts of injurious and insulting material”, he recalled. Back in the present, he stated that the minister finds his indictment “injust”: “Coherently with this, he keeps me in office”.