The day after it was leaked José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's private conversations and diaries, Judge José Luis Calama, the investigating judge in the Plus Ultra case at the National Court, has requested that these leaks be investigated. Calama has made the request to the investigation section of the Madrid court of instance, urging it to identify those responsible for the leaks, which he considers potentially criminal. The magistrate emphasizes that the facts have "gravity" and could fit into "criminal offenses of revealing reserved proceedings." In parallel, the former Spanish president has requested from Calama the "general nullity of the proceedings" of the case for violation of rights. According to ARA, Zapatero maintains that an "illicitly analyzed piece of evidence" has been incorporated.

The investigation by the Audiencia Nacional into José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is revealing the movements of the former Spanish president in recent years. L'ARA has gained access to his 2024 and 2025 diaries and to the WhatsApp conversations he had with his secretary, Gertrudis Alcázar, between April 2025 and the day of his indictment. "Cancel my run?", she asked him that morning. "Yes, of course", he answered her immediately afterwards. There are messages in which both speak directly about Junts. "I can't do English, mess with Junts", Zapatero told him on July 21, 2025. The next day there was the last plenary session of Congress of the political year and Junts voted against the anti-shutdown decree, which also derailed with the rejection of Podem, and against the advance payments, which Moncloa saved thanks to the approval of the PP.

There is a comparison between two fashionable judges who are currently making a name for themselves: José Luis Calama, who is investigating José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero at the National Court, and Juan Carlos Peinado, who has sent Begoña Gómez to trial after a two-year investigation. It is obvious to everyone that the way these two major media cases in which they are involved are being handled is different. Indeed, high-ranking voices from Moncloa in the corridors of Congress admit that Calama "is not" Peinado, as shown by the fact that the investigation into the former Spanish president, still in its early stages, does not have the extravagances of the indictment of Pedro Sánchez's wife. The clear distance between the two has become evident, especially in two matters: the adoption of precautionary measures and the indictment of individuals who have previously testified under oath to tell the truth. Let's go step by step.

The Unit of Economic and Fiscal Crime (UDEF) of the Spanish police has opened a new front for José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. A report accessed by ARA reveals that the former Spanish president allegedly received 200,000 euros from a Peruvian company –Grupo Gloria– in exchange for "mediating or influencing" "various millionaire lawsuits" that the company had in Bolivia. He allegedly charged them through a "simulated contract" with an intermediary company –Focus Social– through three invoices: one for 100,000 euros in 2024 and two for 50,000 euros in 2025. For this purpose, he "allegedly met or contacted" "high political spheres" of Bolivia, such as President Luis Arce, the ministers of Economy and Justice, and the state attorney general. At the center of the target was a sanction of 107 million dollars that the company's cement subsidiary –Soboce– had received.

The defense of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has launched an offensive to annul as evidence the conversations that led to the imputation of the former Spanish president in the Plus Ultra case. His lawyer has sent a letter to Judge José Luis Calama stating that if the conversations were not intercepted with judicial approval, "they must be excluded from the proceedings" and that, therefore, this would entail "promoting an incident of nullity." The validity of this evidence is seen as the great legal battle between the former president and the investigating judge that will determine the future of the proceedings.

If it is confirmed that the jewels found in the Zapatero case were part of a fraud, the economic question is: why jewels? Why would someone choose this circuit and not an intermediary company or an account abroad?The answer lies in the very nature of the object. A jewel concentrates a lot of value in a very small space. It can be handed over in person. It can be kept in a safe. It can be transported with relative ease. It does not require any bank transfer, leaves no digital trace, and can remain outside the declared circuit for years. From an economic point of view, it functions as black money converted into an object. This is its appeal. Whoever receives a jewel can keep it without it appearing anywhere. It is invisible money. If no one sees it, if no one declares it, and if no one asks about its origin, the wealth exists, but it remains off the tax radar. The tax obligation continues to exist, but the tax authorities cannot detect anything.The problem arises when this jewel has to be converted back into money. A jewel does not pay expenses. It does not pay a pension. To recover liquidity, it must be sold. And here begins the second part of the circuit. If it is sold on the formal market, the invoice appears, the buyer's identification, traceability, and the key question: where did this jewel come from? If it comes from a hidden payment, a disguised donation, or an irregular import, the regular sale can uncover the previous fraud. For this reason, these types of assets often end up in parallel markets. They are sold, at a discount, to buyers who are also interested in operating outside the system. The seller receives less than they would get in a jewelry store or at a formal auction, but avoids declaring. The buyer pays less and may be transforming opaque cash into a small, valuable, and transportable asset. The loss of price is compensated, in part, because taxes and controls do not emerge.In an ordinary jewelry purchase, the applicable VAT in Spain is the general rate of 21%. However, other taxes may arise depending on the origin, transfer, or possession of the asset: wealth tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, transfer tax, or capital gains. The opaque circuit seeks precisely to avoid this.The economic route is this: hidden money, jewelry, storage, opaque resale, new hidden money. It is not a sophisticated mechanism. It is ancient. It is the most efficient way to move wealth without going through the bank.The judicial key in the Zapatero case will be to prove its origin. A jewel can come from an inheritance, a legitimate purchase, a declared donation, or an illegal operation. Economically, the difference lies in the trace. When the trace is missing, it is fraud against the Treasury.

For weeks, Telecinco and Antena 3 have been showing contempt and prejudice against Zapatero's daughters that go beyond reasonable journalistic interest for their indictment. Both in morning and afternoon magazines and in the news, there is an obsession with showing photographs of them. The fact that they are two thirty-year-old women who do not conform to hegemonic canons, neither aesthetic nor stylistic, provokes a morbid fixation on their image. It is not new: when they were minors, they were already victims of cruel mockery.

On June 12, 2023, the PSOE began to leave behind the feeling of defeat. That day, an uninhibited José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero went on Cope to defend Pedro Sánchez's "spectacular" government, laughed at the PP's insinuations of fraud, and stated that he expected nothing more than the re-establishment of a PSOE-led government. Carlos Herrera told him that neither the results of the municipal and regional elections nor the polls predicted it to be a plausible scenario. Zapatero began the comeback.

The weekly The Economist, with a hard-won reputation for rigor and liberalism, also excels – like The New Yorker or Libération– on its covers. A few years ago, one was dedicated to Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had just arrived at Downing Street, asking: "Is Bambi a carnivore?”. Over the years and the Iraq War, the British Labourite proved to be not only a carnivore but also an anthropophage.

This was supposed to be a "week horribilis" for the PSOE – another one – but the fact is that it has held up well. For now, the socialists demonstrate that they have an ironclad bad health. When they want to feel good, they start talking about the economy and the good progress of the indicators. It is their favorite mirror, before which they see themselves favored. It's like a psychological spring for emergency situations, for example in debates in Congress. There is a lot of parliamentary agitation around them – especially in the Senate, which is the PP's paradise, where it has a comfortable majority – but the socialists neither fall nor kneel.

The day after José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero spent three hours testifying as an investigated person at the National Court, audios have been leaked in which the former president of the Spanish government can be heard defending himself against accusations of having allegedly committed a crime of influence peddling to obtain the public bailout of Plus Ultra, an airline linked to Venezuelan capital. It had already emerged that the former socialist leader had denied it. And, in the recordings to which ARA has had access, he can be heard saying: "I did not speak with any political authority, with any official, with any public employee about the Plus Ultra bailout." Throughout the interrogation by Judge José Luis Calama, the former Spanish president insists. "I had no involvement, I did not speak with anyone [...] and this is an unquestionable truth. There will be no one who can say otherwise. Therefore, I did not exercise the slightest influence nor did anyone ask me to."

Zapatero's jewels have been making headlines for days and are part of a new separate case within the Plus Ultra case at the National Court. But the necklaces and earrings valued at 1.3 million euros that the former Spanish president received and which come from "inheritances and gifts", according to his spokesperson, have once again put a controversial issue at the center of the debate: why can't we know the gifts that Spanish presidents receive while in office? For example, the current head of the executive, Pedro Sánchez, still has not revealed the gifts he has received since his arrival at Moncloa.

The day after José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero declared himself investigated, Judge José Luis Calama makes a move and takes a further step: he indicts his two daughters –Alba Rodríguez and Laura Rodríguez– and his secretary –Gertrudis Alcázar–. The magistrate did so after the PP requested it, as leader of the popular prosecutions, pointing to the crimes of criminal organization, influence peddling and money laundering. It was an initial request from Hazte Oír that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office subsequently endorsed. Why are they being investigated?

Wednesday morning was a very stressful day for the media in general and for Espejo público in particular. The control session in the Congress of Deputies coincided with the declaration of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero at the National Court. By the start of Susanna Griso's program, at nine in the morning, the former president, who was under investigation, had already arrived at the building. They already had the image of the day: Zapatero getting out of the car and climbing the stairs that led him inside the courts.Public Mirror had three different viewpoints of that moment. The first, a general shot, further away, in which Zapatero was seen in profile getting out of the car. The second, tighter, in which he appeared from the back getting out of the vehicle. And the third, very similar, which captured the moment he turned to wave and went up the stairs. The program joined these three scenes to slightly extend the sequence. It was a triple entry to the National Court. Since Zapatero's declaration was simultaneous with the control session, the program split the screen into several parts. But Zapatero's car arriving was an obsession, to the point that they kept the images on loop for practically the entire program: entering the National Court over and over again. Large, small, on one side, in the center, in the bottom corner, or at the top. They varied it depending on the space they had, the connections with the reporters, and the topics they were developing. But the former president was always there, somewhere or another. Between nine in the morning and beyond one in the afternoon, we saw Zapatero enter the National Court up to 286 times (perhaps with a small margin of error which you will allow me, after spending four hours watching the television loop like someone watching a washing machine drum in motion). More than seventy times per hour. From the side, from the back, or waving. Depending on the time, they also added a few images of the confiscated jewels in between, merging the scene of the car arriving with the loot from the safe. Around eleven in the morning, they offered a touch of creativity: they repeated the images again, adding a caption that supposedly reproduced the insults hurled at him by some pedestrians. Up to eighteen times they replayed the images with the addition of “¡SINVERGÜENZA!” and “¡CHORIZO!” in huge yellow letters. From one in the afternoon, Zapatero left the courts through the guest entrance, which caught most of the media off guard. But they managed a fleeting scene of the socialist leaving, which they replayed in slow motion up to 28 times. “¡Nos han jugado al despiste!”, lamented Griso, and the panelist Toni Cantó commented that the building's column had played in his favor because it partially blocked him. The pleasure of the television verdict. Then they reiterated in two boxes the arrival and departure sequences simultaneously. Zapatero twice at the National Court. The satisfaction of a job well done.

The PSOE was holding its breath following the indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero this Wednesday, and while it is true that the worst imaginable scenario, which was pre-trial detention, did not occur, and the judge did not even order his passport to be revoked, doubts about his case remain the same. This is partly also due to the former president's defense strategy, which has requested more time to explain the origin of the jewelry found in his office – valued at 1.3 million euros – and has also refused to answer about the mobile phone messages of the main shareholder of the company Plus Ultra, Rodolfo Reyes, which are the trigger for the investigation, because his defense is trying to invalidate the evidence. At the end of his statement, the judge made it clear that the testimony had not managed to "discredit the indications" against him, although he admitted that the investigation is in an "embryonic" phase.

Light blue shirt, open blazer and no tie. Pedro Sánchez entered the hemicycle of the Congress of Deputies with this casual look on a day of high political and judicial tension in Madrid: at the same time José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was arriving at the National Court to testify as an accused for influence peddling, money laundering, tax offense, and smuggling. The pressure was already enough today to have to put on a tie. His top lieutenants have joined him: Carlos Cuerpo, who had arrived with a blue one, and Félix Bolaños, who was wearing a red one.

"Anything to declare?" Most people have heard this phrase when their plane had just landed. But customs control is more flexible when it affects authorities. Miguel Sebastián, former Minister of Industry (2008-2011), recently recounted how gifts on official trips were managed – at least in his time. In 2008, already on board the Falcon during the return flight from the city of Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), a royal emissary handed him a leather wallet that hid luxury jewelry inside. He decided not to take the gift home and it is currently in a display case at the ministry, but he recalls that the officials told him: "The most common thing was for us ministers to keep the gifts."Sebastián intended to defend the former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for the jewelry case that he will have to justify before the judge – which come from "inheritances and gifts", according to his spokesperson. But the former minister ended up opening up the can of worms about whether there are many gifts of this kind on official trips that end up at the homes of monarchs, presidents, and ministers, which often land at Torrejón de Ardoz air base (Madrid), the military facilities where official Falcon-type planes are housed.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero reiterates his innocence and denies before the judge José Luis Calama that he influenced in any way the rescue of Plus Ultra, the loan of 53 million euros that the airline company received from the Spanish government in March 2021. According to what ARA has been able to learn, this is what he said during his declaration at the National Court this Wednesday, which began shortly after nine in the morning and has made him the first former president of the Spanish government since the restoration of democracy to declare as an accused in a judicial investigation. He is accused of influence peddling, money laundering, tax offense, and smuggling. Zapatero said that he "never" had direct contact with Plus Ultra and denied asking any authority or official to facilitate the rescue. He specified that the only person he has dealt with is Julio Martínez Sola, the president of the airline, whom he did not know until 2024. However, his explanations have not convinced Judge Calama, who believes that Zapatero "has not managed to dispel" the indications of criminality against him and that they "derive from various and different sources of evidence".

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's expected declaration as a defendant before the National Court has not moved the PSOE's position one millimeter. The former Spanish Prime Minister has emerged while retaining freedom of movement

Spanish political life has a quite explicit calendar this week: yesterday Begoña Gómez, President Sánchez's wife, declared before the judge; today the director general of the Civil Guard declares in the Senate about her contacts with Leire Díez, and tomorrow Zapatero has to declare for influence peddling and money laundering for having acted as an intermediary in the rescue of the airline company Plus Ultra, even though the former Spanish president has asked the judge for more days to defend himself regarding the origin of the jewels, which now turn out to have a value exceeding one million euros. It is a hellish moment for the PSOE.The judge must decide whether to withdraw Begoña Gómez's passport, because he does not want her to leave Spain as he believes there is a risk of flight, while from the Civil Guard's investigation into the PSOE's sewers it appears that Santos Cerdán ordered all of Leire Díez's trips to be approved without any verification and that “nobody knows what was happening in Cerdán’s office”. Contacts in Madrid tell me that most ministers are devastated, and that Sánchez is holding on because he is risking his life or, at least, his freedom. You already know the Catalan drift of this panorama: Salvador Illa is a close friend of Sánchez and, right now, he is the only socialist leader with weight in Spain.And in the meantime, what is Illa doing? Yesterday the president signed a new pact of these that he likes so much, this time with employers and unions, to relaunch industry, so that in three and a half years, by 2030, industry represents 25% of Catalonia's GDP. It does not currently reach 20% in an economy, like ours, heavily tilted towards the service sector.Catalonia is still an industrial country, and it began to be so more than a century ago. I mean that there are realities that are not improvised, and now Illa returns to a very Pujolista narrative of Catalonia as an engine through industrial growth. On Friday I heard the president in La Seu d'Urgell, at the Business Meeting in the Pyrenees. He spoke to them about that association of the Four Motors for Europe from Pujol's era, created in 1988: Catalonia (Barcelona), Baden-Württemberg (Stuttgart), Lombardy (Milan), and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (Lyon). Illa spoke to the businessmen about confidence, about the value of a public health system like Catalonia's, and even about Christian humanism. It was a speech of institutional and constitutional normality, without political adventures, very focused on reviving the country's economic potential through innovation, external openness, and exports, in a tone reminiscent of Pujol's, with the difference that 23 years have passed since Pujol stepped down as president. Illa speaks of the country's economic future like a convergent, perhaps because he aspires to win re-election from convergent centrality, now that the rose on the fist is withered and threatened and that the heirs of Convergence are trapped with the leader still in exile.Good morning.