The first (or the second) Spanish president indicted in democracy

BarcelonaOn June 2nd, a historic situation will unfold in Spain: for the first time in democracy, a former Spanish prime minister will appear before a judge as an investigated person. It will be José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, about whom magistrate José Luis Calama has indications that he headed a corrupt "network" of influence peddling. He will be the first if we assume that Spanish democracy restarted in 1977, with the first elections after the dictator's death. But during the Second Republic, a nascent democratic system had already been put in place —in 1933 women were able to vote for the first time— and a former prime minister had already been charged: in 1934 the Barcelona Court of Justice —delegated by the Supreme Court— investigated Manuel Azaña as a presumed collaborator in the proclamation of the Catalan State.

Azaña was arrested in Barcelona on October 9th, three days after Lluís Companys rebelled against the Spanish government in response to the incorporation of CEDA ministers into the executive. Although the sympathy between Azaña and Companys was always rather scarce —especially after the outbreak of the Civil War—, the former Spanish prime minister (who would later be president of the Republic between 1936 and 1939) had defended Catalonia a few days earlier from his seat in the Congress of Deputies and had met with the president of the Generalitat two nights before the October Events.

Despite being covered by parliamentary immunity, the police arrested Azaña and the Attorney General filed charges for the crime of rebellion, the same charge for which Companys and his government would be convicted. Congress accepted the request for waiver of immunity, and the Supreme Court referred the case to the Barcelona Court of Justice. Three months later, the accusations against him were dismissed, and he was released. Other presidents of the council of ministers would, later on, be tried and repressed by Francoism, but there were no democratic courts there anymore.

Testimonials

Zapatero, then, will be the first investigated since the democratic transition, but all the other presidents have also appeared in court as investigated parties. Not to mention, the current head of the executive, Pedro Sánchez, had to attend by videoconference from Moncloa the request of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado. It was on July 30 and the declaration lasted only two minutes, just enough time for Sánchez to indicate that he would not answer any questions due to the family ties he had with the main person under investigation in the case, his wife, Begoña Gómez.

But Sánchez was not the first president in office to testify as a witness. Before him, for example, Felipe González had done so. For instance, in November 1987, he did so in writing —as Sánchez also claimed he could do— regarding the torture denounced by Tomás Linaza, the father of a suspected member of the terrorist group ETA. His most high-profile court declaration, however, was the one he made ten years later, already as a former president, when he was summoned as an eyewitness in the case of Segundo Marey, the French citizen kidnapped by the GAL who was mistaken for an ETA leader. He denied having any knowledge and, although his indictment was considered, the Supreme Court ultimately exonerated him.

Mariano Rajoy also had to attend a trial as a sitting president. It was on July 26, 2017, to testify in the Gürtel trial, the main corruption network linked to the PP. Although during the years the network operated he was the party's deputy secretary-general and campaign director for José María Aznar, he claimed to know nothing at all. Regarding Aznar specifically, he testified in another trial linked to PP corruption, the Bárcenas Papers case. "I have never received any extra payments," he stated in the National Court.

With respect to the first two presidents of the democracy, Adolfo Suárez and Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, they testified once they had already left office. Suárez declared in 1995 in the National Court in the Banesto case trial, for transfers of 300 million pesetas to his party at the time, the CDS; and Calvo-Sotelo had done so in 1989 in the Valencia Court for the breaking of the Tous dam in 1982.