On February 23, 2026, a judge from Madrid sent the case that led to the impeachment of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the National Court. The case had resurfaced after France and Switzerland sent information about an ongoing investigation in which Plus Ultra appeared as a "client" of a criminal organization dedicated to money laundering. The magistrate pointed out that Rodolfo Reyes – majority shareholder of the airline and in the crosshairs of the United States– and other airline executives allegedly orchestrated a plan since 2020 to "appropriate clean money from public subsidies." As the alleged crimes were reportedly committed outside of Spain, the National Court is competent to investigate them, which is why José Luis Calama is now leading the investigation.

Plus Ultra is the company at the epicenter of the investigation against José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for the public bailout of 53 million euros that he allegedly received thanks to the influence of the former Spanish president. However, the airline is not the only client of Julio Martínez Martínez's corporate network, supposedly directed by the former socialist leader from the shadows. Both the UDEF in its police reports and the National High Court judge José Luis Calama in his indictment order speak of a consolidated organization that sought to profit thanks to Zapatero's "direct intervention" in "high-value international operations." The commission allegedly received from the Venezuelan directors of Plus Ultra would be just one of the plot's income streams.

Today we will have new revelations about the judicial investigation into the lobbying activity of former Spanish president Zapatero, because the judge will deliver to the parties everything that is in the initiated summary. And, of course, with new revelations the pressure on Sánchez's government to step down will increase. On this front there is a significant novelty: the PNB, through its president, Aitor Esteban, said yesterday that it would be “irresponsible” for Sanchez to want to exhaust the legislature in 2027, that is to say, that in view of everything that has emerged (the Zapatero case, but also the Cerdán and Ábalos cases) it would be imprudent to want to go beyond this year.What Esteban is telling Sánchez is that he should not abuse his patience and the deadlock in which the parties that voted for the socialist president's investiture find themselves: it is unlikely that the PNB, Junts, and not to mention the so-called "plurinational lefts" will vote for Feijóo as president of the government with Vox in a motion of censure, but if corruption continues to tarnish Sánchez, it is the Spanish president who should be obliged to call early elections. After all, Sánchez came to power with a motion of censure after corruption drowned Rajoy and the PP government.As always happens in these cases, now there are voices demanding that the law better define the limits between lobbying and falling into the crime of influence peddling. And the convenience of rescuing the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic is also reviewed in hindsight, because it was not essential for air traffic between Spain and Latin America. If it wasn't, why did they rescue it? The PSOE is crossing its fingers so that the judge hasn't found anything else and can recover the discourse of "lawfare" (a possibility that, given what we have seen in the Spanish justice system, would not be so dismissible), but everyone you talk to tells you that, at the very least, Zapatero acted very much on the edge.While the socialists are crossing their fingers that nothing else comes up, in our country, tomorrow there will be another meeting between the Government and the education unions. The teachers' strikes are more than a stone in the government's shoe, they are a boulder in the road that doesn't let it continue to move with confidence and optimism after having been able to present a budget that will be approved. We are at the end of the sports seasons, and Catalonia has lost a team in the First Football Division, Girona. After having reached the Champions League, it drops to the Second Division: the team could not withstand the departure of key players who had made a name for themselves. Not all news is bad. Two Catalans succeeding in the world: the Barça women's football team, which tonight was received in Barcelona by 10,000 people after having won the Champions League, the fourth in the Club's history, in a perfect season that includes all three Spanish titles. And wait, because Alexia Putellas, after Saturday's Champions League, could very well win the Ballon d'Or again. For the visibility of professional women's sport, the service Barça is providing is extraordinary. And Pep Guardiola, who yesterday was bid farewell at City's stadium after 10 years as its manager. The mark Guardiola has left on football can only be defined by "a before and an after"; this can be said of very few managers in history. By the way, both celebrations, that of the Barça players and that of the Santpedor coach, were united by the estelada:

4,079,799.04 euros. This is the amount that Spanish former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero would have taken in five years, from 2020 to 2025, according to the UDEF report, for intervening in the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra and other companies. The receipt of these incomes is one of the two key affidavits that have served as the basis for Judge José Luis Calama to indict, for the first time since the return to democracy, a former head of government.

The Unitat de Delinqüència Econòmica i Fiscal (UDEF) [Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit] of the National Police concludes – at the end of one of the two leaked reports from the investigation into the public bailout of Plus Ultra and the alleged collection of commissions by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for having interceded – that there are "sufficient indications" against the former Spanish prime minister. It is 185 pages in which the UDEF analyzes the communications intercepted on computer terminals of businessmen linked to both the airline and the former socialist leader, as well as the movements of Zapatero's bank accounts — whom they consider the leader of the organized network— and his circle. But what exactly does the UDEF have against the former Spanish prime minister to make this statement, which has led to his indictment in the National High Court case?

The former Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, met with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) company in Beijing and was appointed intermediary for the purchase of Venezuelan oil, according to the report by the Economic and Fiscal Crimes Unit (UDEF) of the National Police, which includes a letter of intent from the Chinese regime's company addressed to Zapatero.

In the news from ARA about the company of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's two daughters, which received more than a million euros from companies investigated by the judge, we see a photograph of one of them leaving that company.

José Luis Ábalos, in preventive detention for the mask case, raises his voice after the imputation of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In an interview with TVE from Soto del Real prison, the former Minister of Transport has distanced himself from the Plus Ultra bailout and stated that it was the former Spanish president who, as the National High Court points out, allegedly pressured for the airline to receive the 53 million euros from the Spanish government in 2021, during the covid-19 pandemic. The former PSOE organization secretary, in fact, assures that he learned of the bailout when he arrived at the council of ministers. "Zapatero bypassed me and spoke directly with Pedro Saura [Secretary of State for Transport]," he states.

Laura (1993) and Alba Rodríguez Espinosa (1995), daughters of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Sonsoles Espinosa, are once again in the media spotlight almost twenty years later. Protected by their father throughout his term, who always wanted to preserve their privacy, the sisters, administrators of the company Whathefav S.L.have placed themselves at the center of the controversy this week, when the investigating judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has implicated their company as a possible shell company to pay commissions to Zapatero (they received more than one million euros from the companies in the network). In fact, it was the former president himself who in March, in the Senate, stated that, given the proposal to advise the consultancy Análisis Relevante –it was the former president himself who in March, in the Senate, stated that, given the proposal to advise the consultancy Análisis Relevante –company at the center of the investigation–, proposed "that his daughters be included as well".The judge has decided to seize 490,000 euros from Zapatero's accounts and has also seized the accounts of his daughters' company, although, for the moment, neither of them is formally being investigated in the judicial case opened at the National Court. According to the magistrate's thesis, Zapatero's daughters' company would have been used as a way to redistribute and justify funds. Specifically, from the year 2020 and over five years, the company would have received more than one million euros through different companies in the scheme. The most significant contribution comes from Inteligencia Prospectiva, with 561,440 euros — considered the supposed entry point for foreign capital — followed by Análisis Relevante (239,755.01 euros), precisely the same consultancy that the former president had contracted. Although there are several invoices issued to the latter between 2020 and 2024 under the concept of "agency services", Judge Calama suspects that the actual work was limited to the layout of reports and that the rest of the services were fictitious. In fact, the investigating judge literally defines it as "an artificial structure aimed at justifying payments". Furthermore, the judge focuses on the continuous transfers made from the company to the sisters' personal accounts. The fact that the former president of the Spanish government appears as an authorized signatory on these bank accounts has substantially increased the investigating judge's suspicions. For all these reasons, Calama considers the search of the headquarters fully justified and details that the investigations have made it possible to detect that, with the company's money, assets would have been acquired and loans would have been paid off.The opening to the media world

The protection of his daughters' image when he was at Moncloa –both were minors– only suffered a small crack in September 2009, which would eventually give them involuntary fame. During a dinner at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, hosted by the then President of the United States, Barack Obama, an official White House photographer portrayed the Zapatero family along with the Obamas in a picture that was published for an hour and a half on the US government's website, until the Spanish delegation requested its withdrawal. That image quickly went viral due to the gothic attire of the former Spanish president's daughters: black tunics and military boots. Obama had invited the Zapateros because a few months earlier, in Prague, the Spanish president had asked him for an autograph for his daughters.

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The first seaplane to cross the Atlantic to make the journey from Spain to Latin America was called Plus Ultra. It was the year 1926. Much later, in 2011, businessmen Julio Martínez Sola and Fernando González Enfedaque decided to pay homage to that anniversary by naming the airline they founded themselves Plus Ultra Línea Aérea. Since this Tuesday, the airline is once again at the center of controversy after former Spanish president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has been cited as an investigated person within the framework, precisely, of the so-called Plus Ultra case. The case, until now under summary secrecy, investigates an alleged money laundering of public funds that the company received in 2021, when the Spanish government rescued it due to the economic impact of covid-19. But the truth is that the company has always been in the shadow of controversy: it has a past marked by losses, lawsuits, and the specter of dissolution.

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The indictment of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero by the National Court, which positions him as the "leader" of an international influence peddling and money laundering scheme, represents a political earthquake of great magnitude that threatens to leave his party, the PSOE, and Pedro Sánchez's government in a very deep crisis a year before the elections. It must be understood that Zapatero is a pivotal figure in the narrative of sanchismo; that he is the person who, during his term, initiated the break with the PSOE of Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra by questioning certain aspects of the Transition, and who has assisted the current president in both electoral campaigns and delicate matters, such as dialogue with Junts.

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The judge José Luis Calama has charged José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero because he believes he was the "decisional and strategic core" of a "network" that exerted influence. "His leadership is not manifested in a formal or public manner, but through his capacity for direction, coordination, and supervision, avoiding direct execution of the most sensitive tasks as much as possible," says the ruling to which ARA has had access. It emphasizes that this role "is deduced" from "multiple pieces of evidence" and places special emphasis on some of the conversations reflected in the summary (in which Zapatero does not directly participate).

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There was an "organized scheme of illicit exercise of influence" and a "stable and hierarchical structure" that was "led" by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and that had the purpose of obtaining "economic benefits" through "intermediation and exercise of influence before public bodies in favor of third parties." This is the conclusion reached by a judge of the Audiencia Nacional to indict the former Spanish president for the alleged crimes of criminal organization, influence peddling, and document forgery and to summon him next Tuesday, June 2, within the framework of the Plus Ultra case. In a ruling of 85 pages, José Luis Calama considers that Zapatero "would have put" his "personal contacts" and his "access capacity" to high-ranking officials of the administration at the service of third parties interested in "obtaining favorable decisions." The judge calculates that Zapatero would have received 1.9 million euros in commissions through three companies: one and a half million directly to him and 400,000 euros to What The Fav, his daughters' marketing company.

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"I have never had any connection with Plus Ultra, nor did anyone ask me for anything. I did nothing and had no interest in the bailout." José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero testified for four hours before the Senate's Koldo case investigation committee. called by the PP at the start of the election campaign in Castile and León to talk, primarily, about the Plus Ultra bailout. A case that is under investigation for alleged money laundering – it is questioned whether part of the bailout could have been used to launder money from corruption in Venezuela – and which the Popular Party has long considered highly credible.

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