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 government president will testify before a judge as an investigated person. It will be José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whom Magistrate José Luis Calama has indications that he led a corrupt "network" of influence peddling. This 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 democracy system had already been put in place —in 1933, women were able to vote for the first time— and a former president had already been charged: in 1934, the Barcelona Court —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 revolted 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 government president (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 protected by parliamentary immunity, the police arrested Azaña and the Attorney General filed charges for the crime of rebellion, the same crime for which Companys and his government would be convicted. The Congress accepted the request for waiver of immunity, and the Supreme Court referred the case to the Barcelona Court. Three months later, the accusations against him were dismissed, and he was released. Other presidents of the Council of Ministers would later be judged and repressed by Francoism, but there were no democratic courts there anymore.

The witnesses

Zapatero, therefore, will be the first investigated since the democratic transition, but all the other presidents have also passed through the courts as investigated. Without going any further, 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 statement lasted only two minutes, just enough time for Sánchez to indicate that he would not answer any questions due to the family link 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. Felipe González, for example, had done so before. For example, in November 1987, he did so in writing—as Sánchez also claimed to be able to do—for the torture denounced by Tomás Linaza, the father of a presumed member of the terrorist group ETA. His most high-profile court statement, 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 who was kidnapped by the GAL, who mistook him for an ETA leader. He denied having any knowledge of it and, although his indictment was considered, the Supreme Court finally exonerated him.

Mariano Rajoy also had to attend a trial as president in office. It was on July 26, 2017, to testify in the Gürtel trial, the main corruption scheme linked to the PP. Although during the years the network operated he was deputy secretary-general of the party and director of José María Aznar's campaigns, he claimed to know nothing about it. Regarding Aznar himself, he testified in another trial linked to the PP's corruption, that of the Bárcenas Papers. "I have never received any extra payment," he stated at the National Court.

As for the first two presidents of the democracy, Adolfo Suárez and Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, they testified once they had left their positions. Suárez testified in 1995 at 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 did so in 1989 at the Valencia Court for the breaking of the Tous dam in 1982.