The National Court now agrees to investigate the Cospedal and Villarejo audios about Kitchen

BarcelonaPlot twist when there are a few days left until the Kitchen trial ends. The National High Court judge Antonio Piña, who is investigating the case, has finally agreed to investigate the audio recordings of conversations between María Dolores de Cospedal and José Manuel Villarejo about the operation to try to steal information that could compromise the PP from Luis Bárcenas. The former general secretary of the PP, who was also Minister of Defense, had so far been one of the big protected names of the case, but finally justice has decided to put a magnifying glass on it due to recordings that also implicate former president Mariano Rajoy.

According to an order that several media outlets have advanced, Judge Piña has tasked the National Police's internal affairs with investigating whether there are "signs of criminality" in the conversations between the former Popular Party leader and the retired commissioner, most of which were published by RAC1. Thus, according to the aforementioned media, he also asks the station to provide the recordings to the court. All this, after the PSOE, which is acting as the popular accuser, once again demanded for the umpteenth time the indictment of Cospedal. In the event that the judge saw, this time indeed, signs of a crime, a separate piece would be opened from the main case, which will soon be ready for sentencing.

But what do the audios of the meetings between Cospedal and Villarejo reveal? One of the audios that caused the most controversy is the one that directly implicates Rajoy in the operation, paid for with reserved funds, against the former treasurer of the PP. It is about a conversation from September 2014: "I know that before they found him, and more or less cleaned up, everything he had", says the former popular leader at one point, supposedly in reference to Bárcenas. And he adds: "The president told me, no one else told me". At another point, he explains that "Rajoy let the other one [referring to Bárcenas, who was then in preventive detention] maintain communication channels". "Just in case", he argues.

The judge now asks the Spanish police to prepare a report based on these conversations and also on those that have been emerging between Villarejo and Ignacio López del Hierro, Cospedal's ex-husband, who allegedly participated in the recruitment of Bárcenas' driver – a key piece of the plot – and who until now had also been exempt from the case. The magistrate also requests that communications via email and bank transfers be investigated, according to the document released to the media.