On October 10, 2016, senior officials of the Provincial Council of Badajoz held a meeting in the town of Valdivia attended by the then leader of the Extremaduran PSOE and president of that body, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, to discuss the preparation of the budgets for the following year. There, the director of the Culture Area of the Council, Elisa Moriano, proposed modifying the job positions of her department to create the figure of coordinator of the two conservatories in the province. The objective was, supposedly, that both music centers would not duplicate their activities and, at the same time, give them greater projection. Gallardo thought it was “a great idea.”
Last Thursday, almost 10 years after that meeting, the creation and awarding in 2017 of that senior management position to David Sánchez has gone to trial. On the bench sit the relative of today’s head of the Executive; the now former Extremaduran socialist leader — both face a three-year prison sentence request — and nine other people as alleged perpetrators of two crimes of influence peddling in medial concurrence with administrative prevarication and illegal appointment. EL PAÍS has reconstructed, based on the case file, the timeline of that suspicious hiring, whose oral hearing these days adds to the judicial front facing the PSOE.
The creation of the position. The first report from the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard delivered to Judge Beatriz Biedma, the case instructor, admitted in November 2024 the difficulty in knowing who ordered the creation of the position, although it already pointed to alleged irregularities. That police document, which led to the indictment of Pedro Sánchez’s brother and Gallardo, already included a timeline placing the creation of the position in early October 2016. In those days, Pedro Sánchez was going through his worst political moment after resigning as secretary general of the PSOE after losing a vote in the Federal Committee against his critics, while his brother was finishing a master’s degree in Milan and did not have a permanent work contract.
The idea of creating the position did not exist on October 5 of that year — three days after Sánchez’s resignation and five before the Valdivia meeting — according to a summary of the budgetary needs for the following year from the Cultural Action department. However, three days later, in an email exchanged between senior officials, the creation of that senior management position already appeared. On October 10, the same day the Valdivia meeting began, an internal document from the Council justified the position and the associated expense. And that same afternoon, Moriano, presumably the person who had proposed it, summoned the directors of the two conservatories in the province, Evaristo Valentí and Yolanda Sánchez, to inform them. When Moriano stepped out of the office for a moment, Valentí told his colleague that the position was destined to be awarded to a person he called “the little brother.”
Pause and acceleration. The project suffered a halt of months until it was reactivated on May 3, 2017. That day, two senior officials of the council exchanged emails with details about the deadlines. One of these messages was forwarded to Gallardo, who replied: “Great.” By then, Pedro Sánchez was campaigning to regain the party’s general secretary position and on May 8 gave a rally in the town of Don Benito in Badajoz. One of the PSOE members sitting on the bench, Ricardo Cabezas, told the judge that at that time he coincided with the current president of the Government at an event and that he told him his brother was a musician.
The judge highlighted in the indictment order that the deadlines recorded in those messages for the creation of the position coincided “almost exactly with those that later took place.” On May 17, 2017, seven months after the proposal to create the position and two weeks after the message setting the phases, the council accelerated the awarding. Moriano and the Culture councilor, Cristina Núñez — also on the bench — signed that day the request citing “the need and urgency that it be filled as soon as possible.”
The bases were published two days later and, that same day, when it was still unknown who the candidates would be, Valentí, the conservatory director who had already suggested to his colleague Yolanda Sánchez that the position was awarded by appointment, sent her an email with the subject “the little brother.” Before the judge, the official would later say it was a rumor. At that time, David Sánchez was looking for work and, according to his statement in court, found the call’s bases on the internet. He also said that until then, he had no connection with Extremadura.
11 candidates. On June 22 — Pedro Sánchez had been elected again as PSOE secretary general a month earlier — the list of the 11 admitted candidates was published, including the brother of the now socialist leader. Days later, the advisory commission made up of three council members (Moriano, Manuel Candileja, and Félix González, all now on the bench) met to set the evaluation criteria. On June 25, David Sánchez contacted a tourist apartment platform to inquire about renting a house in Badajoz to, as he said, test the market in the city. Candidate interviews were held the next day.
One of the applicants for the position, Cristina de Frutos, told the judge that before that test she met two other candidates who commented that the brother of the socialist leader was running. Also, that two or three days earlier the director of a conservatory had already sent her a WhatsApp message saying that people from the Badajoz Council told him that the position was pre-assigned to David Sánchez, so, she said, she doubted whether to attend the interview, although she finally did. Three days after the test, the commission awarded the position to the brother of the PSOE secretary general.
“Tailor-made” position. More than five years later — with Pedro Sánchez already president of the Government — and two months after David Sánchez’s return from paternity leave, the position he held was renamed head of the Performing Arts Office. The judge infers that this modification was made to adapt the position to his personal circumstances and “not have to go to an office daily” (popular accusations cite alleged work absenteeism as evidence of irregularities). The case file includes a chain of emails exchanged between October 23 and 24, 2022, among senior officials discussing the need for this modification. Two days later, the proposal and legality report were signed. The president’s brother said in court that he never knew the reasons for the name change.
Hiring a friend. The court will analyze during the trial a second hiring by the Badajoz council: that of Luis Carrero, a friend of David Sánchez. Carrero was appointed on December 26, 2023, head of the Coordination Section of Centers and Cross-Border Activities Programs of the Badajoz Council. A career civil servant, he had been working until then in the Message Unit of the Political Affairs Department of the Moncloa Palace. Suspicions focus on the fact that, although the bases to apply for that position were published on November 24, 2023, three weeks earlier the president’s brother had written an email to his friend saying: “As soon as you join, I want to spend at least a week here to provide support.” To which the then still Moncloa official replied: “I have no news or schedule about joining; the last thing [Manuel] Candalija [Culture Area director, also on the bench] told me was during November.” Finally, Carrero’s arrival at the Council took place later, in January 2024.
During the investigation, David Sánchez admitted that Carrero, before taking that position, had collaborated with him “privately,” although he denied influencing the awarding of the position to his friend, who in an email referred to him as “little brother.” Now, both sit on the bench alongside Gallardo and eight others. The first witnesses begin to testify on Monday. The president’s brother and the other accused will not do so before June 4.
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