Each organizational model, each “us” –business, family, gastronomic– has its own dynamics and tools. Public corruption forms a triangle with three vertices: the political, the technical, and the business one. Convicting sentences usually focus on the first angle and tend to ignore the other two prongs of the fork. But without officials who dress up the business with administrative neatness and without suppliers, intermediaries, or facilitators, the business would not run. In corporate corruption, it is also not common to get to the heart of the matter, beyond the greedy executive, the accommodating lawyer, or the inattentive internal auditor. Certainly, there must always be someone on duty, in the kitchen and in the dining room, ready to plate or fill the glass; but it is hard to believe that the top brass never knows anything about it. In the case of BBVA, it will go to trial –following the illegal commissions to commissioner Villarejo–, in addition to the head of security, the head of legal advice and the risk manager, its principal. And, even more infrequently, the entity itself as a legal person. Let no one be alarmed, because despite rigorous fiscal requests, none of the implicated executives have set foot in prison; nor has the accused former president, who is enduring the ordeal in summer resorts in Mallorca and Marbella. The bail imposed, so far, or the fine for the bank, if convicted, are peanuts for well-off economies. I am not exaggerating: the entity broke profit records in 2025 and will distribute a dividend of more than 5,200 million. Repsol or Caixabanc neither sat on the bench for equivalent facts, as a reward for the diligence observed, nor did they assume subsidiary civil liability, due to the waiver of the injured parties.The ruling in the Ábalos case is also one to be framed, as many diners do with the mythical menus of Michelin-starred restaurants. It says nothing about the civil servants, as if corrupt arrangements were not manipulated but rather handled at a self-service counter. But the most striking thing is the disproportion between the conviction of the politician and that of the businessman. The court does not see a trident with shared responsibility, but rather a skewer. Whoever can speak, let them speak…, that will be free of charge. It seems the invitation will take effect, given the debut of the entrepreneur Julito Martínez, we will see with what luck. I do not criticize the instrumental measures to bring to light hidden infractions nor the modulation of the penalty for each of those involved, but when the balance between utilitarianism and equanimity is broken, the message is dangerous. Success, both in court and in the kitchen, depends on getting the proportions right.

The Ministry of Labour wants to protect employees who report possible cases of corruption in the company or institution where they work. Specifically, the ministry led by Yolanda Díaz (Sumar) plans to bring to this Tuesday's cabinet meeting a draft bill that amends the Workers' Statute to declare the dismissal of an employee who has reported a possible case of corruption as a reprisal null and void, according to ministry sources.

These are probably the most anticipated explanations in recent times. Both by public opinion, as well as by the PP and Vox opposition, and also by the Spanish government, which maintains its confidence in former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Two months after being indicted, the former PSOE leader broke his silence this Thursday in the first interview he has granted since being investigated by the National Court. And right from the start, he was clear: he maintains that he is innocent, that he has not "corrupted" himself, and that the jewels were a "courtesy gift," the origin of which he will explain to Judge José Luis Calama. In other words, Zapatero has reaffirmed that he did not exert any kind of influence over the government presided over by Pedro Sánchez for them to rescue the Plus Ultra airline during the pandemic and, in parallel, has defended that he has had no profit motive in possessing jewels valued at 1.3 million euros. Even, at one point in the interview, he went so far as to say that they were simply "there," in the safe, mixed with the family's inherited jewels.

Vilanova del Vallès chains weeks of betrayals, corruption accusations, uncovered negligence projects and a motion of no confidence held this Tuesday by the hand of some renegade councilors who were in the current municipal government, but who left two weeks ago and have been rewarded with the mayoralty. Josep Casals was sworn in as mayor this Tuesday after breaking with his party and thanks to an agreement with the historic rival in the municipality. Furthermore, as ARA has been able to learn, Casals is being courted by Aliança Catalana to become the party's candidate in the next municipal elections. However, it is not yet "closed" even though work is being done on it, according to party sources. He clarifies that he is not "in contact with anyone" for this purpose, although Aliança Catalana's interest in the municipality is evident, according to sources consulted by ARA.

June began in Parliament with a heated control session in which the opposition tried to surround the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, for the cases of alleged corruption affecting the PSOE and Pedro Sánchez's circle. And the first control session of this July has started the same way, with one more step from the Junts politicians. The president of the Junts group in the Catalan chamber, Mònica Sales, demanded this Wednesday that Illa ask for "forgiveness" for the judicial cases and stop "hiding himself". "When Catalonia has a problem, you disappear; when the PSOE has one, you are always there," she said. "This weekend you had the opportunity to ask for forgiveness on behalf of your party," she retorted, referring to the PSOE federal committee, in which the president said that socialists have "no fear" of anything. Illa, in turn, reiterated that he fears nothing and that he has already given the necessary "explanations".

It is a common place to affirm that politics consists in choosing the least bad of two deficient alternatives and that democracy serves to oust those who do not do well. In the Declaration of Independence of the United States, in 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Citizens have the right to be free and to try to be happy.In Spain, for years we have found ourselves mired in a confrontation that has turned politics into a war of communication where anything goes to harm the opponent, who has already become an enemy. We have moved away from the principles proclaimed by Jefferson and practiced by Adams, and we have built a political environment based on what is negative and bad rather than on what is good and positive, and on the fact that telling lies is "legitimate" if it is effective. "That's politics," they say. It is not.It doesn't matter if a person hasn't broken the law or abused their power if I can accuse them of doing so, with false reasons or half-truths. Once the accusation has begun, social networks will do the rest and, from anonymity, will convince many that what is not true is true. The problem is that the enemy of truth is not lies, but half-truths, which, by containing part of the truthfulness, make it difficult to discern the degree of falsehood.

The future of Spanish political life is currently being played out in two different scenarios, each with its own rhythms and liturgies, making it difficult to make accurate predictions. The first arena is the judicial and the second, the strictly political. I place justice first because, for now, if Pedro Sánchez's government falls, it will not be due to management problems, serious errors in key economic decisions, or foreign relations. The siege on the executive is not being achieved by the opposition, but by the specialized units for economic crimes of the National Police and the Civil Guard, along with the judges and courts involved in the criminal prosecution of the PSOE. I am not talking about lawfare, but about a de facto situation, in which political events are marked by the content of the police reports and court proceedings.

The Congress of Deputies once again experienced one of those disastrous days this Wednesday that cause citizens to distance themselves from politics. The exchange of recriminations between the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has brought no new developments and has only served to further tarnish the political climate, something that, as some spokespersons have rightly warned, primarily benefits the far-right. In a normal democracy, a verdict like the one in the Ábalos case, in a judicial process that has been suspiciously swift and with sentences that some jurists deem disproportionate, would be enough to bring down a government. But it is true that Spain has peculiarities that explain both Pedro Sánchez's resistance to throwing in the towel and why no partner is currently considering supporting a motion of no confidence alongside the PP and Vox.

Brexit is a representative example of how a demagogic idea (less than an idea, barely a slogan) can come to condition an old, stable, and respected democracy like the British one, and by extension, international politics. More than anything else, Brexit was a huge, colossal stupidity, and as happens with stupidities, its effects were — and still are — devastating. Keir Starmer became prime minister with a striking Labour absolute majority as has not been seen for a long time, and now abandons power mid-term, with discredit earned through hard work: to implement neoliberal policies, the others were already there, there was no need for a Labour politician as right-wing — and as anti-European — as the Tories themselves. Starmer has had to experience from power the explosion of the far-right in the United Kingdom, represented by Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party, an old populist who had always played a residual role in British politics and who now has solid possibilities of gaining power.Starmer's resignation has coincided with the conviction of former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, and the Spanish right sighs: may Pedro Sánchez follow the example of his colleague Starmer, who after all is also one of them, they say. Starmer was made to step down, as he himself has acknowledged, by his own party. The Spanish right wants to play Pedro Sánchez the trick we already know from Lula da Silva in Brazil or António Costa in Portugal: to set up a judicial siege around a president and his government (with true and false causes, and with an arbitrary and discretionary use of the justice administration) until the president in question resigns or ends up in prison (this would be the most desired outcome with Sánchez).Those who will go to prison, with sentences that surely must be adjusted to their crimes, are Ábalos and Koldo. The exemplary nature of the sentence should be celebrated, as well as the speed of the process: let's hope the example also applies to the PP, a party that according to the Gürtel sentence has been organized to commit crimes at least since 1988 and occupies headquarters paid for with black money, without anything happening. The two speeds, the different yardsticks: Kitchen has reached trial thirteen years late, and it seems that justice is also in no hurry with the Montoro case, of structural gravity for the powers of the state. Nothing that we do not know, on the other hand, since the offensive of the robes against the Process. Finally, the one who will not go to prison will be Víctor de Aldama, one of those characters who seem to be taken from Santiago Segura's films and who abound and move at high speed among the high powers of Madrid. A hustler, a betrayer, a liar, and an almost confessed swindler who gets away with the laughter of the triumphant scoundrel. "Thanks to justice," says the subject, with all the cynicism, and encourages "those who come behind" to follow his example. Spanish democracy does not need any Brexit, it creates it every day.

"The left cannot steal," Gabriel Rufián, a Member of Parliament for Esquerra, told the PSOE bench a year ago. This warning resonated strongly with a PSOE which, with the Koldo and Cerdán case and the investigations into Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez – wife and brother of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez – were yet to be joined by the cases of Leire Díez and former socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The perception in public debate, however, is clear: progressive voters do not forgive illicit enrichment, as the conservative electorate does. But does corruption really punish the left more than the right? Far from being a myth, evidence shows it is a reality with studied mechanisms.

Like an eternal return, a persistent democratic migraine, the pornographic recordings, the stench of the sewers, the triangulations of the subsoil mud, and the dirty money from commissions return. It happens, however, that in murky waters, full of accumulated toxic sediments, everything is always mixed at once, one thing and the contrary: legitimacy and illegitimacy, legality and illegality, naivety and arrogance. Because, in purity, it seems entirely legitimate – considering the chronology of events – that if a party and a government feel like victims of the depths of a state that already sufficiently accredited its darkness and miseries, then it tries to find out the actors, dynamics, and arteries. To denounce them publicly, to nullify them politically, and to judge them criminally, of course. Not the contrary. Because it is not that it seems illegitimate, it is that it is, radically, to pretend that the fight for a supposed democratic regeneration is carried out with identical dirty war, clumsy saviour teams and, even, using structural actors – Villarejo, once again – of the plot they intended to dismantle. Laugh to keep from crying. Felipe González used to say that At this stage of democratic degradation, we have already seen them in so many colors as to know that these types of conspiracies always end up filled with very curious, careless, and quite boastful characters, who so often boast of relationships, information, and contacts that often never existed. Even, completely naive, they think they will get away with it and never doubt if they will end up sinking the one they intended to rescue. That is, they do not fully understand the high police and military technostructure of the State. Of this State within the State, which has always seen separatism as a threat, saw in Podem a systemic risk and thinks that the current legislative majority is an anomaly to be corrected. Otherwise, in other latitudes of night and fog, the opacity of parallel structures is recurrent and habitual, and they tend to be very peripheral – trying not to leave any remains, traces, or faces. Neither the PP with the Kitchen nor the PSOE with the Leire case have made much effort. Another crude naivety that reveals where we are, but not yet what bill we will pay.The paradox, in any case, is that if everything were a lie, the PSOE's response is understandable, but if everything is true, it also is. The PSOE says that those involved were "charlatans, opportunists, and resentful." Really? Because they are two former organization secretaries –Ábalos and Santos Cerdán– whom Sánchez appointed. So, where is the catch? How far does the ripple effect go? How deep is the crater? We only need to rummage through the archives to see that we are back to square one. Seeing Grande-Marlaska change his version three times in less than a week about the finally confirmed conversations of Leire Díez with the director of the Civil Guard is simply devastating: from denying them to acknowledging them. One day, one thing, and the next day, the opposite. It won't be for lack of paradoxes. The food chain of all this is that the last one attacked –the PSOE of Pegasus and the police infiltrators, believe it or not– thinks they are the first. The PSOE now believes this –which looked the other way when the blows were falling on Podem–, Podem said it a few years ago –as if the harshness against independence hadn't existed before–, and Catalan independence said it in 2017 –forgetting the years of anti-legal exception in the Basque Country and a long cycle of repression against Catalan social movements and new criminal suspects, from Julia García-Valdecasas to Núria Pórtulas, or from the Three of Gràcia to the Eleven of El Raval–. If we start rewinding, we already know clearly where we will end up: in the blind spots of the Transition. In what lurked in the heart of the State.

It is now known that the end of the Spanish legislature will be a judicial ordeal for the PSOE. As we explain today, there are up to seven open judicial fronts against members of the party or the government, and that's if there are no secret cases underway that could appear at any moment. Many things can be said, but the only certainty is that the legislature began with right-wing protests in the streets and demonstrations by judges against the amnesty law, and it ends with a judicial siege on a party as has not been remembered at least since the end of the Francoist era.

Government changes in Spain go through processes of demolition. They seem like regime changes, and sometimes they even are. I'm not talking about the virulence of political confrontation. Internal struggles within and outside parties do not make Spain unique. No, what makes Spain unique is an unfinished territorial architecture that always threatens to be demolished or reconfigured. It is this unresolved issue and the bloody expression of ideological difference that turns politics into a battlefield.

“You cannot force a country to choose between democracy and stability, because there is no greater instability than that which stems from corruption”. The phrase is by Pedro Sánchez and was addressed to Mariano Rajoy the day before the motion of no confidence that made the socialist leader president of the Spanish government, on June 1, 2018. Next Monday it will be eight years.

Faced with the crisis that looms heavily over the PSOE due to the Zapatero case, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has reiterated his support for the socialist ex-president, who is being investigated for alleged crimes of criminal organization, influence peddling, and document forgery. On the day that the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard entered the party headquarters on Ferraz Street in Madrid, Sánchez assured from Rome that he has read the judge's order and has been informed of the summary through the media and that he "reaffirms" his opinion: "Full cooperation with justice, full respect for the presumption of innocence, and all my support for President Zapatero. There is no reason to change this position.

Politics should not be a profession. In an optimal democratic system, our representatives should come from society itself and, therefore, already have their own job, a profession. The cases of those who come from work and return to work once their task is finished are so unusual that their case becomes news, as happened with Julio Anguita. Former presidents, moreover, have a lifelong pension, a secretary, an office, and a driver with an escort, whether they were in office for half their lives or only lasted a few months. A luxury retirement, at the opposite extreme of widows who receive the minimum wage. The establishment of these privileges is already a scandal and establishes a completely unfair comparative grievance with the rest of the workers. (Well, I am self-employed, so I know what awaits me the day I can no longer string two sentences together and get paid for it: becoming an occupier and anti-system grandma, at the very least.)

The Civil Guard yesterday arrested the entire governing board of the Torredembarra City Council, led by mayor Daniel Masagué, for alleged crimes of embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, prevarication, and influence peddling. The Civil Guard also arrested the deputy mayors, Francisca Felguera, Santiago Ardèvol, Elia Rodríguez, and Pere Font, from CiU, José Oviedo, from the PP, and Ignasi Duran, from the Group of Independents of Torredembarra (GIT).

President Salvador Illa defended his chief of staff, Eduard Rivas, this Tuesday morning, after his involvement in alleged irregularities when he was mayor of Esparreguera (Baix Llobregat) became known. Rivas, who led the town hall of this municipality for the PSC between 2015 and 2024, is being investigated as part of a process that probes public contracts of the council, according to has been reported by El Periódico, which explains that the Mossos confiscated the socialist official's mobile phone three months ago. Illa has reaffirmed his "full confidence" in his collaborator.

1. While here we are eating the 'mona' cake, in Madrid they are working. The third term of the school year begins with one of those news items that will have repercussions. This Monday, the trial for Operation Kitchen begins at the National Court. The case will once again place the Popular Party at the epicenter of the mire. And this is not just a case of corruption. It is much more than that. It is being investigated whether the party in power used the State to cover up its own corruption. The indications seem clear, but justice, in Spain, can always come out with a broken candle.

Forestalia is a major Aragonese renewable energy company that is quite well known in Camp de Tarragona: it intended to promote a 287-kilometer high-voltage line, 181 of which are in Catalan territory, to bring electricity from Aragon to Catalonia. A project, controversial at the time, which is now history. However, the headaches for the company are not over, and now the dust is being generated by an alleged environmental corruption case that, for the moment, has resulted in six arrests. What is being investigated?

Let's take it step by step. The case has already been dubbed the Forestalia case. This Friday, a hearing for precautionary measures is scheduled by the magistrate responsible for the case. Broadly speaking, an alleged environmental corruption scheme affecting the province of Teruel, in Aragon, is being investigated. The case came to light ten days ago, when the Central Operational Unit for the Environment (UCO) of the Guardia Civil arrested six people, including a former senior official from the Ministry for Ecological Transition, Eugenio Domínguez, and the owner of the company, Fernando Samper. Searches were also carried out in Madrid and Zaragoza. Juan José Cortés Hidalgo, head of Court of First Instance and Instruction No. 1 of Teruel, is directing the investigation under judicial secrecy.

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