Seven years after being charged, the National Court has acquitted Gonzalo Boye of the crimes of money laundering and document forgery. In between, there was a fourteen-month investigation against him, two years of waiting to send him to trial, two years of interlude until it was held and a four-month oral hearing. The trial was adjourned for sentencing a year and a half ago. In contrast, the court has sentenced the Galician drug trafficker Sito Miñanco to 17 years in prison for the operation to introduce almost four tons of cocaine into Europe in 2017. In a 325-page ruling, the court has exonerated Carles Puigdemont's lawyer because it could not “conclude unequivocally” that he had “any participation in the drafting” of the documents that served to camouflage and hide the illicit origin of the 890,000 euros in cash that were seized at Barajas airport in February 2017 and which were the embryo of the case. The case has ended with 24 convicted and 24 acquitted.

The management of the Ceuta crisis is crossed by judicial decisions. The National Court has halted the installation of the immigrant camp at the port of Ceuta. An initiative by the Spanish government to house a thousand people temporarily, which had clashed with the Ceutan executive. However, it was a police union, the Unified Police Union (SUP), that caused it to be stopped with a very urgent precautionary request. The contentious-administrative chamber of the National Court has agreed to this, at the request of the SUP, until it can study the documentation from the Ministry of Transport and resolve the precautionary measure.

María Tardón (Zarzuela del Pinar, Segovia, 1957) has been a judge at the National Court since 2018, when she took over from Carmen Lamela, the magistrate who sent the 'Jordis' to prison in September 2017. Tardón, a single mother and a cinema enthusiast, has made cameos in five films and has completed many stages of the Camino de Santiago. She began working at sixteen in a chocolate factory while studying law by correspondence and has been practicing as a judge for 39 years. She had only a four-year hiatus to jump into politics as Deputy Mayor for Security with the PP in Madrid from 1999 to 2003. She is now at the forefront of current events because she will investigate the mass entry of immigrants into Ceuta and her past with the PP has led Minister Óscar Puente to “doubt her impartiality”.

A judge from the National Court will investigate the mass entry of immigrants into Ceuta at the end of July. After two initial reports from the Spanish police, which pointed to the passivity of the Moroccan security forces, María Tardón decided on Monday that she is competent to open a case and investigate the possibility that a crime against the peace or independence of the State, against the rights of foreign citizens, and a crime of criminal organization may have been committed. The first move she has made has been to request from the Ministry of the Interior all the documentation that the Spanish government declassified and made public. However, the experts consulted by ARA agree that the investigation will have little reach in ensuring that anyone assumes criminal responsibility. “It is a kind of toast to the sun, it is completely unthinkable that Morocco will collaborate,” says Manuel Cancio, professor of criminal law at the Autonomous University of Madrid. “The judge will run into a wall that will make it very difficult to move forward, Morocco will not collaborate and will not hand over Moroccan citizens,” adds Ramon Ragués, professor of criminal law at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

The PSOE maintains unchanged the script it has established since the Leire Díez case broke out and continues to build a wall between Ferraz and the woman known as the socialist plumber. Now it has been the turn of Ana María Fuentes, the current party manager, who has testified at the National Court as under investigation for forgery of commercial documents. The Civil Guard and Judge Santiago Pedraz suspect that she falsified invoices and engagement letters to get money to Leire Díez and, in turn, conceal the payments. Sources present at the statement explain to ARA that Ana María Fuentes has shifted the blame onto Santos Cerdán, who at that time was the party's organization secretary and is also under investigation, alleging that he was the one who made the decisions and who ordered and gave the go-ahead to the engagement orders, invoices, and payments. She defended that she did what he told her, that she limited herself to paying and that she "did not control" expressly and specifically what the money was spent on.

The National Court has decided to open a criminal case to investigate the massive entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July. After the endorsement of the Public Prosecutor's Office and receiving the reports it commissioned from the Spanish police and the Civil Guard, Judge María Tardón considers that she is competent to analyze events that she believes could be framed within three crimes: one that compromises the peace or independence of the State, against the rights of foreign citizens –in connection with a crime of reckless homicide for the 83 bodies that were found in Spanish waters– and of criminal organization. “We are facing criminal conduct allegedly committed abroad that has seriously attacked the territorial integrity of Spain,” she maintains. “It is deduced that the crime has an intentionality to attack the State,” adds the judge, who recalls that Pedro Sánchez presented the events as a “violation of the territorial integrity of Spain”. Furthermore, she points out that the events were promoted by a “plurality of persons not yet identified” and justifies that a “massive migratory flow” is “one of the characteristic methods” of hybrid warfare.

The Public Prosecutor's Office is in favor of the National Court formally opening a criminal case regarding the massive entry of migrants into Ceuta at the end of July. This is stated in the report submitted by prosecutor Jesús Alonso, who concludes that the judge is competent to investigate the facts. After having received the pronouncement from the public ministry and the reports from the Spanish police and the Civil Guard, the magistrate María Tardón must now make a decision. The Prosecutor's Office argues that the “main result” of the migrants' entry affected Ceuta and justifies that the law of the judiciary allows Spanish jurisdiction to scrutinize “conduct developed outside the national territory” when there are “sufficient connecting elements” and when the “legally relevant effects” are projected onto interests protected by the Spanish legal system.

Fifteen years after the announcement of the definitive cessation of armed activity, ETA prisoners are once again topical because semi-freedom regimes have confronted the Basque government with the Prosecutor's Office and the National Court in recent months. Throughout 2026, two prison surveillance judges have revoked five decisions by the executive, which are shared by the PNB and the PSE. Justice has particularly questioned the haste in granting regimes under article 100.2 of the prison regulations, which allows a prisoner to leave prison to carry out a specific treatment program aimed at their reintegration; or third degrees, which allow them to live outside prison and only return to sleep.

The investigating judge of the National High Court, María Tardón, has asked the Civil Guard if it received "any information in the preceding days that could have alerted" to the "massive irregular entry" of thousands of people into Ceuta from Morocco between July 30 and 31 last year. In a ruling to which ARA has had access, the magistrate requests the Information Head of the armed institute to report on the "operation carried out by the different Civil Guard personnel deployed in the territory, particularly regarding the rescue operations of people located in Spanish territorial waters", as well as their personal circumstances.

The judge in the Plus Ultra case, José Luis Calama, rectifies and now accepts to study the nullity incident raised by former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The magistrate has partially admitted the request regarding a possible violation of some of his rights. At the time, Calama rejected the nullity incident of the case because he had filed the brief "outside the 20-day period provided by law since the party had access to the proceedings". Now, however, the judge has found that some of the resolutions he asks to be annulled were notified to him later and, therefore, the deadline would not have expired for all of them.

The judge is making a move to X-ray the alleged payments made by the PSOE to Leire Díez within the framework of the supposed maneuvers instigated to destabilize and hinder judicial cases involving Pedro Sánchez's circle. Santiago Pedraz wants to delve into the suspicion that a series of invoices paid by the party served to covertly fund the activity of the person known as the plumber of the PSOE. The National Court magistrate has accepted the request from the Civil Guard –endorsed by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office– and has requested information from twelve banks regarding the movements and balances of 81 accounts related to the case. Six of them belong to the PSOE. In addition, there are 62 belonging to Ismael Oliver and his law firm, eleven linked to Gaspar Zarrías, who was vice president of the Regional Government of Andalusia, and one belonging to Jacobo Teijelo, who is one of the lawyers for Santos Cerdán.

Before the summer holidays, José Luis Calama has made a move to deepen the patrimonial investigation of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. After a new report from the UDEF, he has given the green light to a battery of information requests to follow the trail of money related to the alleged “organized and stable structure aimed at the exercise of illicit influences”. The order, which ARA has had access to, authorizes the Spanish police to access 57 accounts in twelve banks. 25 belong to the former Spanish president, his two daughters and his secretary – who are also under investigation– and Julio Martínez Martínez. The other 32 belong to companies linked to the alleged scheme. In Zapatero's case, the request is to Banco Santander, CaixaBank, and BBVA, three banks where he has six bank accounts.

The Swedish fashion giant H&M will not be able to search the personal bags or lockers of its employees, as it has been doing until now to check if they had stolen. The National High Court has declared this practice null and void and orders the company to cease carrying it out "immediately".

The defense strategy of businessman Julio Martínez Martínez has become a new headache for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The friend and alleged frontman of the former Spanish government president has put it into practice this week, advised by lawyer María Dolores Márquez de Prado. It is with whom he was accompanied this Tuesday when he appeared as an investigated party at the National Court, a scenario that Márquez de Prado knows very well. This renowned criminal lawyer worked as a prosecutor there for seventeen years. A period in which she earned the nickname "indomitable." Precisely for being a headache for another former socialist leader, former Spanish president Felipe González during his time in Moncloa.

When on February 21, 2024, the Civil Guard arrested him, Víctor de Aldama was president of Zamora CF and his name had never appeared related to the Spanish government. Two and a half years later, his “active” collaboration in the judicial investigations that tarnish Pedro Sánchez has turned him into a ticking time bomb for the PSOE. Not only because of the “full and continuous cooperation” with justice that has led to the "condemnation of José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García, but because, boasting of the benefits of stretching the blanket, it has become a path to follow for other people. And it is a weak point of the defense that Moncloa, under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, puts up. This very week we have had some examples. 

The president of Plus Ultra Línies Aèries, Julio Martínez Sola, and the CEO of the same entity, Roberto Rosselli, involved in the Zapatero case, have resigned from their positions. They did so while being investigated for the loan the company received during the pandemic, as reported by ACB sources and confirmed by EFE.

“I will have it when the [ministers'] council finishes, that's how we've kedat”. This is the message of discord that Jorge Fernández Díaz clings to in an attempt to achieve acquittal in the Kitchen case trial, which has entered its final stretch at the National High Court after almost four months. Where does it come from? It is an SMS that, on August 2, 2013, the then Minister of the Interior allegedly sent to his number two, Francisco Martínez, who was Secretary of State for Security. It is one of the pieces of evidence that led to Fernández Díaz's indictment – in September 2020 – and has brought him to the dock. The Prosecutor's Office is asking for fifteen years in prison. However, from day one, he denies its authenticity. “We maintain the thesis that these messages never existed. If they existed, they were neither sent nor forwarded by him,” his lawyer, Jesús Mandri, defended during the final statement. He considers that they underwent “clear manipulation” and an “ad hoc creation” and that it is “implausible” to claim that the messages came from the former minister. On the other hand, sources from the prosecution support them, arguing that it makes no sense for Francisco Martínez to put in writing something that incriminated him.

Julio Martínez Martínez has become one of the key figures in the investigation into José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. They both met in 2011, when the former president sold him a house in Almeria, they became friends and got fond of going out running together. The UDEF believes he was his frontman. 24 hours after disrupting Zapatero's defense strategy by assuring that he was the one who “marked the steps to follow” in the Plus Ultra rescue, the businessman has spent four hours testifying before Judge José Luis Calama as a suspect and has fully ratified the confession about the former president's intervention. Despite this, he said he does not know who he influenced or with whom he spoke for the airline to receive public aid. Sources present at the declaration explain to ARA that he recounted that he simply relayed to Zapatero what clients told him, that he did not get involved in the actions he took, and that he did not report to him if he was going to see anyone.

The Constitutional Court will begin to reconsider the amnesty in two months, on September 22, because really, what are sixty days in the life of a person who has been waiting for justice, exiled or disqualified, for almost nine years? It won't matter anymore.

On May 19, early in the morning, a piece of news exploded like an unexpected shell: a judge from the National High Court charged José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as the alleged leader of an influence peddling scheme. A month later, he, who in recent years has been Pedro Sánchez's loyal squire and guardian, testified before José Luis Calama for almost three hours and denied all suspicions root and branch. But he left one topic unaddressed: the jewelry worth 1.3 million euros that the Spanish police found in the safe of his office. A week later, the UDEF opened a new avenue and suggested that Zapatero received 200,000 euros for influencing in Bolivia in favor of a Peruvian company. Since then, leaks and complaints from the former Spanish president's defense have been the only news in a case shrouded in many unknowns. From that moment on, and despite the lingering questions, Moncloa maintains its unwavering support for the former Spanish president and Pedro Sánchez reiterates his "confidence" in him.