It is difficult to talk about lawfare in the cases that harass the PSOE due to the multitude of evidence and proof that accumulate daily, but if there is one that could serve to illustrate a textbook case of lawfare it would be the one affecting the wife of the Spanish president, Begoña Gómez. Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has led a surreal investigation, guided by evident bad faith and hostility towards Pedro Sánchez and his circle. For this reason, everyone took for granted that last Monday, when Begoña Gómez was summoned for a hearing, the judge would proceed to inform her of her indictment and the opening of oral proceedings. Surprisingly, however, five days later, the judge has not yet communicated his decision, nor has he ruled on the popular prosecution's request to withdraw her passport preventively, which unjustifiably prolongs the procedure.

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.

The Spanish government is usually prudent when it has to comment on the judiciary, but there are two exceptions: the case of the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, in which they defended his innocence until the end, and the case of the Spanish president's wife, Begoña Gómez, who this Monday Judge Juan Carlos Peinado brought a step away from trial. This Tuesday, up to three ministers have closed ranks with Pedro Sánchez's wife and have even insinuated that there is political persecution. Moreover, they have reaffirmed that everything will be corrected by higher authorities. "We are in a state of law and not in the regime of Ferran VII," said the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, alluding to the reference that Peinado made in his ruling comparing the Spanish government to an absolutist regime.

The political chronicle continues to be a judicial chronicle, with the trials continuing against Jorge Fernández Díaz and the patriotic police leadership, against Ábalos and Koldo, and against the Pujol family.

Two years after initiating the investigationthat triggered the famous five days of reflection for Pedro Sánchez, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has decided to close the investigation into Begoña Gómez, bringing her a step closer to trial for four crimes. She is accused of influence peddling, embezzlement, business corruption, and misappropriation. The magistrate believes that her status as the Spanish president's wife served "to influence" and allowed her "access to exceptional institutional dialogues".Hours after the decision, the Spanish president has again indirectly accused the magistrate of engaging in politics. One of the key points of Peinado's thesis is the solicitation of funds for the chair that Sánchez's wife co-directed at the Complutense University of Madrid, which is at the epicenter of the case. The judge states that Gómez sought the funds "ostensibly" for the project, but that – in reality – they were to "be integrated into her personal assets".

Judge Juan Carlos Peinado is keeping his case against Begoña Gómez, the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, alive. This Wednesday, the magistrate rejected the motion to dismiss the case and made another move: he has charged another official from the Moncloa Palace, the current Secretary General of the Presidency and former Director of the Department of Technical and Legal Coordination, Judit Alexandra González Pedraz. Peinado has summoned her to testify on November 12, at which time he will inform her of the charges against her and that she is being investigated for embezzlement. One aspect of this case is the hiring of Gómez's former advisor, Cristina Álvarez, for which the magistrate has also charged Álvarez herself, Begoña Gómez, and the Spanish government's delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín Aguirre, who previously held a position in the Presidency. The judge's argument is that the hiring of this advisor, paid for with public funds, actually served to manage Begoña Gómez's private affairs. To justify this charge, in the ruling made public this Wednesday, the judge cites the judgment in the embezzlement case. Peinado explains that embezzlement is not only that defined in Article 432 of the Penal Code, which is also "the most common," and which refers to "appropriating, with the intent to profit, or allowing a third party to do so with the same intent, public assets under one's charge." He recalls that the judgment in the embezzlement case also invoked the possibility of "eventual misappropriation," that is, when public funds are managed in a "disloyal" manner. Peinado, in this regard, cites one of the excerpts from the judgment in the trial: "The crime of embezzlement of public funds, subject to a significant reform introduced by Organic Law 1/2015 of March 30, now punishes not only misappropriation or theft, but also the disloyal administration of public funds." In this sense, he recalls that other judgments have established that this type of embezzlement "condemns the conduct of the authority or public official in charge of public assets who, breaking the bonds of fidelity and loyalty incumbent upon them by virtue of their position and abusing the powers of their office, causes harm to the assets under their administration." Thus, he adds that this type of embezzlement includes actions such as "the improper assumption of obligations," which is what he believes occurred in the Begoña Gómez case. The Foreign Ministry example

Peinado cites as an example the conviction of Raül Romeva, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, for failing to comply with the Constitutional Court's orders and preventing "the use of public funds for the illegal referendum and, above all, the uncontrolled use of public resources for this same purpose." According to the judge, the ruling in the Catalan independence trial did not condemn "the normal operation of Diplocat"—which the Minister of Foreign Affairs controlled—nor the opening of delegations abroad, but rather "the blatant disloyalty of using public funds to cover the expenses incurred as a result of a referendum."

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The attempt by controversial judge Juan Carlos Peinado to tighten the grip on Pedro Sánchez has claimed a new victim: the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños. In a ruling signed this Monday, the investigating judge in the Begoña Gómez case submits a reasoned statement to the Supreme Court to investigate Bolaños for alleged crimes of embezzlement of public funds and perjury. This stems from the appointment of Cristina Álvarez, an advisor to the Moncloa Palace who worked as an assistant to Pedro Sánchez's wife. He attributes responsibility for her appointment to her during his time as Secretary General of the Presidency of the Spanish government. Bolaños appeared before the media this afternoon to express his "complete calm" at the judge's decision, but also his "concern for the image of justice" that this ruling leaves behind.

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