The ex-Pujol with whom they broke up by phone from Mexico just before his birthday

Barcelona"I didn't even have the office key," Mercè Gironès defended herself this Wednesday at the National Court (AN), "nor the alarm code," but she did "stop by to say hello some days." Mother of three, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's ex-wife is accused of a total of five crimes, for which the Prosecutor's Office is requesting 17 years in prison, allegedly committed while she was the administrator of several companies owned by her ex-husband. "When we get married, we make a verbal agreement that everything we earn from now on will be 50%," stated the eldest son this Monday, one of the few statements he made regarding his ex-wife, as he did not want to talk about her because: "she is the mother of my children" and because "she has never deceived me." A "gallantry," as Gironès's lawyer states, which seems to be due to a warning from the couple's children to their father.

They had known each other since Gironès was fourteen years old and they married on November 8, 1986, at the Santa Maria del Mar basilica. Apparently, the marriage seemed to work better professionally than personally: "I signed without reading because I thought everything was done correctly. (...) I never doubted her work. Other things, yes," Gironès argued before the magistrates. The accused introduced herself thus: "I started studying law and stayed there, I dedicated myself to my children and my home." In 1996, she saw Jordi Pujol Ferrusola leave her for the first time. 

At the end of 1999, he returned, and that's when Gironès began to receive payment as administrator of the companies under investigation. "He told me: you have to go to such a place, deposit into such an account… It was all legal because it was a private business and we all have the right to do private business, don't we?" argued the eldest son's ex-wife. The couple, however, separated again in 2011: "On the 6th or 7th, he informed me from Mexico that he would not return home. I didn't see him again because I was turning 50 and had arranged to celebrate it with my children in Paris. He took the opportunity to take his things from the house.

The issue is that Jordi Pujol Ferrussola, since 2007, was already accompanied by Victoria Álvarez, a "lady", in Gironès' own words, who "said she was his partner": "But I lived with him, so she will be the ex-girlfriend". In fact, it was Álvarez's statements that in 2013 triggered the start of the investigation before the National Court, a year that Gironès described as horrible for her. All this during a statement of more than an hour in which Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's ex-wife was seen to be very emotional and on the verge of tears.