Zapatero, Pedro Sánchez's last man
MadridThe indictment of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is not just the indictment of a former Spanish president (which is already a lot). It is also the indictment of Pedro Sánchez's closest confidant after his inner circle has fallen: José Luis Ábalos, in preventive detention, and Santos Cerdán. Zapatero is the last pillar of the PSOE leader who remains under scrutiny for an alleged corruption scheme.
With Felipe González almost voting for the right, the former Spanish president is the only reference that Sánchez's socialism can claim. He has not been involved in the Andalusian elections for nothing, and the PSOE's comeback in the second week of the 2023 election campaign is even attributed to him. But it is more than that: without Zapatero, this legislature probably would not exist. He was the architect of the plurinational majority and the one who wove the necessary trust with former president Carles Puigdemont to achieve Pedro Sánchez's investiture. Together with Santos Cerdán, he was Junts's interlocutor at the negotiating table in Switzerland and the necessary firefighter to redirect the mandate's main crises with the Junts party. In fact, no one from the PSOE's front line remains from that table without being pointed out by the justice system.
The 'they say, they say, they say'
In Madrid, journalistic information has been published for some time about Zapatero's possible links with illicit operations in Venezuela – today it was El Confidencial who advanced the information– and alarms already sounded on February 27 when the investigating court number 15 of Madrid, which was investigating the case of the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra, decided to transfer jurisdiction to the National Court because it considered that the case was taking on a "new dimension". The story was that what they had found on the mobile phone of Julio Martínez Martínez, arrested in December 2025, directly implicated Zapatero. That he was going forward, basically, using the expression used by Isabel Díaz Ayuso's chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez.
In socialist ranks, the news has not come as a surprise either, although they admit they had no prior information that would be released this Tuesday by the judiciary or police circles. They mean to say that they do not control them. However, they do accept that judicial pressure will increase (will Pedro Sánchez be indicted at some point during the legislature?), especially as the Spanish elections approach, which Moncloa maintains will be in 2027. They consider that there is harassment around the Spanish president: Judge Peinado has brought his wife, Begoña Gómez, to the brink of sitting in the dock – the jury trial could be just before the elections–; next week the trial of the PSOE leader's brother, David Sánchez, begins; the Ábalos case is already awaiting sentencing and the former minister is in prison, while the Cerdán case is under investigation for alleged receipt of illicit commissions.
However, the party's reaction has been different in these cases. While they speak almost of a political operation in the case of Begoña Gómez or the president's brother, the truth is that in the case of Ábalos and Cerdán they have given veracity to the accusations and have created a firewall with respect to the party. What will happen with Zapatero? For now, he has the confidence of Moncloa – "We trust in his innocence," they say – and also of the leading figures of the formation, who fiercely defend his legacy. The question is whether, as details of the investigation become known (the secrecy was lifted this Tuesday), the PSOE will be able to maintain this position or if it will happen to him as in the case of Cerdán, who after an initial defense they let him fall. But Zapatero is Zapatero and the implications that this case will have on the morale of the socialist ranks cannot yet be measured.
