What is Plus Ultra? The airline in the spotlight of the Zapatero case

MadridThe first seaplane to cross the Atlantic to make the journey from Spain to Latin America was called Plus Ultra. It was the year 1926. Much later, in 2011, businessmen Julio Martínez Sola and Fernando González Enfedaque decided to pay homage to that event by naming the airline they founded with the same name: Plus Ultra Línea Aérea. Since this Tuesday, the airline is once again at the center of controversy after former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been summoned as an investigated party within the framework, precisely, of the so-called Plus Ultra case. The case, until now under summary secrecy, investigates an alleged money laundering of public funds that the company received in 2021, when the Spanish government rescued it due to the economic impact of covid-19. But the truth is that the company has always been in the shadow of controversy: it accumulates a past marked by losses, lawsuits, and the specter of dissolution.

What is Plus Ultra?

Despite being born in 2011, it did not obtain the air operator certificate until 2015. In August of that year, it began operating with charter flights (aircraft rental) from Madrid and Tenerife to Latin America (Caracas and Lima). A year later, it started to add regular flights. Today it has twelve routes connecting Madrid and Tenerife with different Latin American cities, as can be seen from its website.

Its founders already knew the aviation sector: they were in charge of Air Madrid when it went bankrupt in 2006 and left thousands of passengers stranded, especially Latin Americans. The National Court investigated them for the bankruptcy, but ended up acquitting them. González, however, got into trouble with the courts again and in 2019 was convicted of a tax offense to 11 months and 29 days in prison.

Annual losses

Plus Ultra has always registered losses in all its fiscal years. In fact, it has been saved from dissolution on repeated occasions thanks to loans from Venezuelan and Peruvian businessmen, as well as from the Panamanian firm Panacorp Casa de Valores. Its financial situation, therefore, has always been critical.

The SEPI bailout

On March 9, 2021, amid the covid-19 pandemic, the council of ministers approved a loan of 53 million euros through SEPI, the Spanish government's investment arm, to the company (34 million in the form of a participating loan, and the remaining 14 as an ordinary loan). The money was part of the Fund for the Support of the Solvency of Strategic Companies, approved so that companies considered strategic could alleviate the economic shock of the health crisis. In fact, many from the tourism sector benefited.

In the executive's opinion, the company was "strategic" because it offered flights to migrants living in Spain or their relatives at an affordable price and the frequencies were adequate (they complemented the major airlines). Then, SEPI used three external reports to approve the rescue, but did not produce any internal report on the company's financial situation. "It was decided that it was not necessary," explained the then director of the entity, José Ángel Partearroyo, recently.

The link with Venezuela

But the decision unleashed the criticism of the opposition (Vox, PP and Citizens), as well as astonishment in the aeronautical sector due to the company's weight. For example, Ryanair considered that Plus Ultra "was not a strategic airline" for the Spanish market and that SEPI's aid fund was "discriminatory". In fact, Plus Ultra has four planes and the number of passengers is almost irrelevant to the total. In any case, Ryanair did not appeal the rescue to the courts, unlike Vox, the PP or Manos Limpias. That legal case, however, ended up being dismissed in 2023.

Then, the political darts also pointed to the political implications behind the decision of the Council of Ministers. They placed in their sights the fact that almost half of Plus Ultra's capital is in the hands of Snip Aviation, where there are three Venezuelan directors: Rodolfo José Reyes Rojas, president; Raif El Arigie Harbie, member; and Roberto Roselli Mieles, attorney and at the same time CEO of Plus Ultra. All of them were linked to the administration of Nicolás Maduro and the then vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. Plus Ultra arrived in Venezuela in 2018 when other companies were dismissing routes to Caracas due to the social and economic instability of the country.