The PSOE attributes to Santos Cerdán and Leire Díez the plot under investigation by the judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz, which they allegedly orchestrated between 2024 and 2025 with the purpose of discrediting judges, prosecutors, and state institutions such as the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard. Sources from La Moncloa and Ferraz insist that Pedro Sánchez was unaware of the activities of the former Secretary of Organization and the former party member, who would have acted under their orders. The UCO states that Cerdán and Díez’s operation sought to “protect the interests” of the president.
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The PSOE Secretary of Organization, Rebeca Torró, has lamented the “sum of individual behaviors of fraudsters, opportunists, and resentful people” revealed in the summary of the Leire case which, according to Ferraz, “have used the name of the PSOE in vain and falsely, much to the PSOE’s dismay.” The party’s number three has requested in a message on X “that no one has any doubt about the honorability and transparency” of the party “and the values represented” by its initials.
Government sources also insist that the director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, did not carry out any actions to sabotage the judicial cases affecting the PSOE. The UCO has confirmed “at least” three meetings between Díez and the director of the armed institute, whom she urged to initiate an “internal investigation” against that anti-corruption unit.
Ferraz has also issued a statement asserting that the three contracts mentioned in the reports “are formally legal.” “Our internal channels continue analyzing the supporting documentation and, if at any time, we detect an identifiable responsible party or harm to the party, we will take the appropriate judicial decisions,” it adds.
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The PSOE recalls that it “already acted some time ago against several of the people mentioned in the proceedings,” referring to Cerdán, who was dismissed a year ago after being charged in a corrupt plot for allegedly demanding kickbacks in exchange for awarding public contracts, which would also involve the former minister and his predecessor in Organization José Luis Ábalos and his advisor Koldo García. Díez resigned as a member after being received by Cerdán a year ago.
Despite the discomfort with Cerdán and Díez over the blow to the party’s reputation, the PSOE has not filed a lawsuit in all these months against the former member who allegedly worked under the orders of the former Secretary of Organization. Emiliano García-Page criticized this Wednesday at an informational breakfast in Madrid Ferraz’s decision not to do so. “I believe the PSOE should file a lawsuit; in my case, I would have already done so, it seems textbook to me, it is harming us,” said the president of Castilla-La Mancha.
The socialist baron emphasized the amount of evidence accumulated in various orders and judicial summaries in the different corruption cases that undermine the image of the main government party. “But the makers of the evidence were the accused themselves. They recorded, exchanged messages… One can be corrupt and very clumsy,” he shared his astonishment with irony. “Citizens listen to recordings, messages, the orders are extensively documented, it can be tremendous, worldwide, because the accused have left all the evidence in the world. I had not seen cases where so much evidence was left,” he added before urging Sánchez to submit to a vote of confidence “urgently.” “It is the decent thing at this moment,” he concluded without giving up the request he has been making for a year: the calling of general elections.
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