The man who used to run with Zapatero and is now in the judicial spotlight

MadridUntil fourteen days ago, Julio Martínez Martínez was an anonymous businessman with over thirty years of experience. He was listed as the sole administrator of sixteen companies—eleven with headquarters in Petrer (Alicante), four in his hometown of Elda, and one in Madrid—and he often went running with a "friend of many years." That friend is former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. When he was with him on December 8, dressed in athletic wear, running along the paths of El Pardo—as they did most of the time—he didn't yet know that four days later the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the National Police would arrest him as part of an investigation into the Plus Ultra airline for money laundering. The following day, the judge confiscated his passport and prohibited him from leaving the country.

"It's not unusual for us to meet up, to go running many mornings," he said a few days ago in an interview about his relationship with Zapatero. The WorldThe businessman – who should not be confused with Julio Martínez Sola, the president of Plus Ultra, who was also arrested in the same operation – stated that he was not carrying any backpack with confidential documents that day, but simply a sports bag with a change of clothes.

So far, he has denied any of the charges against him—he still doesn't know the reasons for his arrest—and has completely distanced himself from the Plus Ultra bailout. "I have never been anyone's front man," he emphasizes. The only connection—he says—he has with the airline is that one of his companies has been advising it for six years. And, as a businessman, he has a "relationship" with Venezuela: he has no business dealings and no ties to the Nicolás Maduro government, but simply a "relationship with the country."

Julio Martínez Martínez's relationship with Zapatero goes beyond morning jogs. One of his companies, Ánalisis Relevante SL—which offers support, advisory, and consulting services—is a client of What The Fav, the communications and advertising agency owned by the former Spanish president's daughters, Alba and Laura Rodríguez. Outside the business sphere, as a member of the Moors and Christians troupe, he won an award at the 2014 Moors and Christians festival in Elda.