Simon Hunter
SPAIN’S Guardia Civil has not found any evidence of wrongdoing by Begoña Gomez, the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, as part of a court investigation begun by a judge after a lawsuit was filed against her by a labour union with links to the far right.
Madrid magistrate Juan Carlos Peinado opened the probe into Gomez in April, after the case was brought by Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), a pressure group that is usually described in Spain as an anti-corruption ‘pseudo-union’, and which has brought a series of high-profile court cases in recent years.
The lawsuit, however, was based on press clippings from a series of online news outlets. Some of the accusations in the said stories have already been proved to be completely false. The public prosecutor called for the case to be shelved.
Despite the scant evidence against Gomez, the judge ordered the Guardia Civil to prepare a report on her and her alleged influence on a series of deals.
Read more: What is Manos Limpias?
The contents of this report have been leaked to Spanish daily El País, despite the judicial proceedings currently being under seal.
The deals that Gomez has been accused of influencing include a multi-million bailout for airline Air Europa that was approved by the Cabinet in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as financial assistance from a company called Red.es – which at the time was part of the Economy Ministry – for another firm called Innova Next.
This latter company was owned by Juan Carlos Barrabes, who was linked to Gomez having served as a professor at a masters course at Madrid’s Complutense Museum. The prime minister’s wife was the co-director of the course.
According to El Pais, the Guardia Civil has investigated the public funds that went to both of these private companies but has found no evidence of influence peddling on the part of Gomez.
In the case of Innova Next, for example, the Guardia Civil only found one letter of recommendation among a total of 32 signed by Gomez in favour of funding to be assigned to the firm.
What’s more, the police force pointed out, Barrabes’s companies have received as many as 28 contracts from the public sector, including one from Madrid City Hall, which is governed by the opposition Partido Popular (PP).
When the Madrid court accepted the case against Gomez, Prime Minister Sanchez took the unprecedented step of suspending his public duties for five days to ‘stop and reflect’ on whether to stay in the job given the effect it was having on his family.
After this period of reflection he opted to stay in the job and called for an end to political and media attacks, and the mud-slinging that has characterised Spanish politics in recent years.
For its part, Manos Limpias announced on Tuesday that it would be calling for the judge in charge of the case to fully investigate who had leaked the conclusions of the document to El Pais.
