There is a name linked to the PSOE that has appeared in the first two sessions of the Kitchen case trial, which implicates the leadership of the PP's Ministry of the Interior: Javier Pérez Dolset. He is a businessman and collaborator of Leire Díez, the former socialist militant nicknamed the plumber of the PSOE, and considers himself a victim of the state's dirty dealings. Months ago, he admitted to meeting with Santos Cerdán at Ferraz to hand over documents on irregular practices of Mariano Rajoy's government, and since last October he has been investigated for attempting to bribe two prosecutors. What is his connection to Kitchen? Four years ago, he provided the Spanish police's Internal Affairs Unit with a series of recordings by José Manuel Villarejo. And now, at the request of the retired commissioner, he will have to testify as a witness in the trial.

Year 2013. Mariano Rajoy governs Spain with an absolute majority and the "papers of Luis Bácenas" come to light, revealing the existence of a black box within the PP. Following this, the Ministry of the Interior, led by Jorge Fernández Díaz, designs and –according to the Public Prosecutor's account– launches an "illicit police intelligence operation" with the aim of stealing information and evidence from Luis Bárcenas, the former treasurer of the PP, that would incriminate popular leaders in the context of the Gürtel case. The ultimate objective is to "prevent" it from reaching the hands of the investigators. Five years later, that corruption trial ends with the sentence that leads to the motion of no confidence that brings Pedro Sánchez to La Moncloa. And now, thirteen years later, the leadership of the patriotic police sits on the defendants' bench, with "requests for fifteen years in prison by the Public Prosecutor's Office, in a trial that begins on Monday at the National Court and which will have to shed light on the maneuvers of the state's sewers to protect the PP. The main crimes they are accused of are cover-up, embezzlement, bribery, disclosure of secrets, and influence peddling.

This week, two trials are set to begin in Madrid that will undoubtedly have a significant impact on Spanish politics. This Monday, the trial for the Kitchen case kicks off at the National High Court, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court will try the former minister and former organization secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, for the first case affecting him: an alleged scheme to collect commissions for selling masks to various state institutions.

Operation Catalonia is the "illicit" origin of the case against the Pujol family. This is the argument being presented by the defense lawyers for the former president's family in the trial at the National Court. The court, in fact, has accepted that the leadership of the "patriotic police" must testify as a witness in the trialAnd this Thursday, new evidence of his role in the case against the Pujol family was published. It is an audio recording from 2017. disseminated by Eldiario.esIn a recording, former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo confirms that Victoria Álvarez, former partner of Jordi Pujol Ferrusola and a key figure in the origin of the case against the family, was paid by the National Police. He states this in a conversation with former PP Secretary General María Dolores de Cospedal. According to the aforementioned media outlet, the conversation took place on September 12, 2017, shortly before the October 1 referendum, at the PP headquarters on Génova Street. "If they find out that Vicky is being paid by the Police, we're in trouble, don't you think?" Villarejo says at one point in the recording. "Well, yes," Cospedal replies, in further evidence implicating the PP leader in Operation Catalonia. The recording, according to the same report, has been in the hands of the National Court judges investigating the Kitchen case for two years, who have allegedly ignored it.

First legal actions following the new revelations about Operation Catalunya. The PSOE, which is acting as the private prosecutor in the Tandem macro-case concerning everything surrounding the illegal practices of former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, filed a brief with the National Court on April 11—advanced by The Country and to which ARA has had access – in which he demands that the former number 2 of the PP, María Dolores de Cospedal, be charged. audios published on RAC1 In which the retired police officer and the former Minister of Defense converse on September 15, 2014, about how they "changed history" with their maneuvers. "From 62 to 50. I think it was positive," said Villarejo, referring to the number of seats Convergència i Unió won in the 2012 elections.

Despite the PP's efforts to deny its existence, the maneuvers of the state's sewers during Mariano Rajoy's governments are accumulating ever more evidence. New audio published this Wednesday by RAC1In fact, it directly implicates the former Spanish president in the Kitchen operation, the operation paid for with secret funds to steal information about the party's corruption from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas. It concerns a September 2014 conversation between María Dolores de Cospedal and José Manuel Villarejo. "I know that they had previously found, and more or less cleaned out, everything he had," the former PP secretary general says at one point, supposedly about Bárcenas. She adds: "The president told me, no one else did."

Declining to acknowledge the authenticity of the audio recordings and claiming they were manipulated and edited. This has been the joint strategy of former PP deputy leader María Dolores de Cospedal and former PP leader in Catalonia Alícia Sánchez-Camacho to evade the new evidence linking them to Operation Catalunya. This Monday, precisely, The world on RAC1 has published a conversation the former Defense Minister had with former Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo in September 2014, in which they openly discussed the dirty war against the independence movement. "I don't remember talking about Catalonia with Villarejo," Cospedal asserted during her appearance before the Congressional commission of inquiry. Far from shedding light on the maneuvers against leaders of the Process, Sánchez-Camacho attempted to spin the narrative: she presented herself as a "second-class citizen" and a victim of "persecution" that "forced her to leave the territory she loved." "This is the real Operation Catalonia," she criticized.

José Manuel Villarejo continues with his strategy of dropping grandiloquent and serious statements to defend himself in his judicial cases. On the second day of questioning in the first trial of the Tándem case, this Tuesday he again talked about the terror attacks on August 17, 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils, and has linked them to Spain's National Intelligence Center (CNI). The former National Police superintendent has asserted that the former director of intelligence services Félix Sanz Roldán "miscalculated the consequences of giving Catalonia a little scare".

Spain's National Court judge Manuel García Castellón has agreed to free ex superintendent José Manuel Villarejo on bail, who had been in pre-trial detention since November 2017. The magistrate's decision comes after the Prosecutor's Office requested it on Wednesday, following the refusal of the National Court to advance the first trial that the investigated is scheduled to face in December this year. The public ministry had requested it with the aim that an eventual conviction would allow to keep Villarejo in prison, but considers that the expiration of the maximum term of provisional imprisonment on November 3, before the first trial, means the measure would not have legal support. If the reason to keep in prison is to make sur he will appear in court, it makes no sense as he will have to be freed before the hearing anyway.

After almost three and a half years in pre-trial detention in Soto del Real for up to 25 cases opened against him as part of the operation Tandem, which are dotted all over the high courts of the state, retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo already has the first court sentence in his hands. And, to the surprise of the state apparatus, it is an acquittal. The magistrate of the penal court number 8 of Madrid has communicated this Monday the acquittal of Villarejo for slander and filing a false accusation against the former director of the National Center of Intelligence (CNI) Felix Sanz Roldán. The charges originate in Villarejo's 2017 appearance on LaSexta's Salvados, where he claimed the then head of the Spanish secret services had threatened the former lover of the king emeritus Corinna Larsen. This is a minor trial held only ten days ago in a Madrid court of first instance and not in the High Court, where the alleged network of parapolice corruption created by Villarejo is being investigated. But the trial gave him the opportunity to go public for the first time since he went to prison, in a meeting in which the so-called "state sewers" are facing off: Villarejo vs. Roldan, supported by the State Attorney's Office.