Where do the 4 million that Zapatero would have taken come from?

Barcelona4,079,799.04 euros. This is the amount that Spanish former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero would have taken in five years, from 2020 to 2025, according to the UDEF report, for intervening in the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra and other companies. The receipt of these incomes is one of the two key affidavits that have served as the basis for Judge José Luis Calama to indict, for the first time since the return to democracy, a former head of government.

The police report divides the income into two main blocks. The first totals 2,510,297.04 euros and is channeled through companies linked to the so-called Zapatero Group. The second is 1,569,502 euros, from consultancies, conferences, and international advisory services. The police do not present these incomes as a simple list of professional work, but as part of a criminal network that would be "led and based on Zapatero's contacts" and which ultimately benefited the former president and his "closest family circle".

The UDEF, which concludes that the "final beneficiaries" of this economic structure were Zapatero and his daughters, even includes a visual report of money flows to Zapatero and his daughters' marketing company, What The Fav. In this regard, it determines that the transfers were justified through contracts that would function as "mere documentary justification". The police, therefore, speak of payments formally covered by suspicious contracts.

The first entry channel is Análisis Relevante, the company of Julio Martínez Martínez, a friend of Zapatero and considered by the investigation to be the head of the network. This company paid 490,780 euros to the former Spanish president and another 239,755 euros to What The Fav. According to the UDEF, the bulk of the funds received by the company, from the airline Plus Ultra, Inteligencia Prospectiva, Softgestor, and Grupo Aldesa, ended up around the former head of the Spanish executive.

The daughters' company received 561,440 euros from Inteligencia Prospectiva, a shell company – with a single employee and offices that the UDEF has not been able to find – controlled by the Venezuelan brothers Domingo and Guillermo Amaro Chacón. This company appears in the report as one of the entry routes for foreign funds and as one of the most prominent pieces of the economic circuit. What The Fav also collected 171,727 euros from Gate Center and 12,297 from Thinking Heads.

Zapatero, for his part, received 352,980 euros from Gate Center and another 681,318.04 euros from companies in the Thinking Heads group, including its North American subsidiary. The UDEF identifies Daniel Romero Abreu Kaup as the sole administrator of Thinking Heads Group and also links him to Gate Center, an entity of which he appears as founder and president. Not all payments have an identical nature in the report, but the police group them into a "defined and hierarchical" network.

To this first block of 2.51 million, another 1.56 million is added in direct income for the former president for consulting, mediation, strategic advice, and conferences. The report details 55 transfers from Kreab Iberia for 851,180 euros; 3 transfers from Focus Social Research SAC for 200,000; 27 transfers from Chinalink Asia Holdings Limited for 159,034.45; three payments from Mimo Advisors for 104,410; seven transfers from Kreab Worldwide for 105,000; a payment from Bright Digital Solutions for 53,000; another from Yuewee International Trade Limited for 49,758.34, and one from Zayed Award for Human Fraternity for 47,120.27.

The report also reaches the subsequent destination of part of the money received by What The Fav. Laura Rodríguez Espinosa's account received 247,191.06 euros between April 2021 and December 2025. Her sister Alba's, 199,904.25 euros between April 2023 and December 2025. In both accounts, according to the UDEF, their father was listed as an authorized person.

Mortgage cancelled in less than a year

The police also incorporate a financial operation of the family. The report states that Zapatero and Sonsoles Espinosa, his wife, bought a property in Madrid on February 26, 2024, for 580,000 euros, financed with a mortgage of 500,000 euros. Less than a year later, specifically on January 16, 2025, this mortgage was paid off early through a transfer of 498,000 euros ordered from an account of the former Spanish president's wife.

In short, the report concludes that Julio Martínez Martínez formally assumed ownership or management of companies in which "the non-visible leadership in the formal structure was exercised by Zapatero." And in this scheme, the companies Análisis Relevante, What The Fav, Inteligencia Prospectiva, Gate Center, and Thinking Heads appear as pieces of a circuit that, according to the police, turned contacts, contracts, reports, and advice into a millionaire flow towards the former president and his family.