Spanish court urged to throw out case against leader’s wife

Prosecutors in Spain asked a court yesterday to throw out a corruption case against prime minister Pedro Sanchez’s wife that has prompted him to announce he is considering resigning.

Madrid’s prosecuting authority said it was appealing Wednesday’s decision by a city court to look into a private complaint laid by anti-corruption activists against Begona Gomez over alleged influence peddling and business corruption.

The appeal will be heard by a separate court and could take months, and the judge’s investigation into Ms Gomez is sealed in the meantime.

Mr Sanchez, who secured another term for his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) last year as leader of a minority coalition government, told citizens in a letter on Wednesday he was taking a five-day break from public duties and would announce his decision to stay or quit on Monday.

He forcefully denied the allegations against his wife and said the case was part of a campaign of “unprecedented slander and harassment from the right and far right”. Ms Gomez has not addressed the allegations in public.

The group behind the complaint, Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), said earlier yesterday it had based its suit on media reports and could not vouch for their veracity.

The group’s head, Miguel Bernad, said in a statement on Facebook the group had compiled and passed the reports to a judge out of “civic duty”, and denied that the action was politically motivated. Mr Bernad has links to the far right.

Manos Limpias accused Ms Gomez of using her influence as the wife of the prime minister to secure sponsors for a university master’s degree course that she ran.

If Mr Sanchez does resign it would lead to either a new candidate standing for a vote in the lower house or a snap election in the summer. Mr Sanchez could also submit himself to a confidence vote to reinforce his leadership.

Since July, Mr Sanchez has relied on a patchwork of smaller parties to informally support the government, including Catalan and Basque separatists.

In particular his deals with Catalan parties have enraged opposition parties along with a significant part of the populace, sent relations between rival parties to a near-all time low and generated a series of tit-for-tat impropriety claims played out in the media.

High-ranking Socialist Party and government officials rallied behind Mr Sanchez yesterday, flooding the airwaves to denounce what they called an increasingly toxic political climate and describing the complaint by Manos Limpias as fake.

Deputy premier and budget minister Maria Jesus Montero said she hoped Mr Sanchez would announce next week he would remain in the post “because we need him”.

Yolanda Diaz, leader of Mr Sanchez’s leftist coalition partner Sumar, said the prime minister’s controversial move sought to “reinforce our democracy”.

The opposition said Mr Sanchez was irresponsible to sidestep his position and accused him of bringing the country into international disrepute.

The head of government “cannot throw a teenager’s tantrum so that people beg him not to go and not to be upset”, said the leader of the conservative Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo.

Mr Sanchez’s move comes as the Socialists are facing two sets of important elections. Opinion polls show they are favoured to win an election in May in Catalonia, ruled by separatist parties for the past decade.

In the June European Parliamentary elections, Spain’s Socialists are expected to be a bulwark against advancing conservative forces.

On Wednesday, Carles Puigdemont, who heads the hardline Catalan separatist Junts party, suggested Mr Sanchez should submit to a confidence vote.

Yesterday, the more moderate ERC signalled it would back Mr Sanchez if he were to call such a vote. The leader of the Basque Nationalist Party, Andoni Ortuzar, said a confidence vote would be the “simplest solution”.

Ignacio Molina, social scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, said the prime minister delayed a decision on his future to mobilise his base and to reinforce the support of other parties who need to see fulfilled the promises Mr Sanchez has made in return for their backing.

“Many of them have a lot to lose if the government is derailed and a right-wing government takes over,” he said.

Political analyst Miguel Murado said Mr Sanchez would “certainly” win a confidence vote, using it to garner support and sympathy to boost his position.

The judge handling the case, Juan Carlos Peinado, said on Wednesday he would open a preliminary case to investigate whether Ms Gomez had engaged in influence peddling and corruption in business in her private dealings.

Manos Limpias head Mr Bernad, who in the 1980s ran in two European elections as a candidate for the far-right National Front in the 1980s, said in his statement yesterday the suit was not political but “solely based on journalistic reports”.

Manos Limpias had decided to ask the court to launch a probe into Ms Gomez’s business dealings after prosecutors had failed to act on their own initiative and the investigating judge would decide whether the media reports were true or not, he said.

Judge Peinado has called two digital newspaper editors to testify as witnesses in the probe, a court source told Reuters.

Manos Limpias claimed – citing the online newspaper reports – that Ms Gomez received favours from airline Air Europa and its Spanish holding company Globalia during her time as director of an African research centre at Madrid’s IE business school until 2022, according to radio station Cadena Ser, which shared a document it said was the legal complaint on its website.

IE said in a statement that it had never received any financial support from Globalia or its entities.

In March, Spain’s conflict of interests watchdog threw out a complaint made by the opposition People’s Party that claimed there was a link between a government bail-out for Air Europa, following the Covid crisis that grounded travel, and the “economic and professional ties” of Mr Sanchez’s wife.

In a joint statement from March, Globalia and Air Europa said the aid received from the Spanish government was “in line with the parameters of other aid received by different companies in the sector in Spain and the rest of Europe”, and it considered itself a victim of “political crossfire”.

“The head of government cannot throw a teenager’s tantrum so that people beg him not to go and not to be upset”