Pedro Sánchez is currently maintaining his confidence in both the Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the Director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, despite the enormous political pressure on them, with the PP calling for their resignation, following the publication of a UCO report indicating that the latter had three meetings with Leire Díez, an alleged spy on the PSOE payroll. The UCO maintains that after these meetings there were movements to hinder investigations affecting the president’s family, basing this on Leire’s own communications.
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González, however, denies that version from Leire Díez and the UCO, and through a statement made public by Interior, maintains that in those meetings – she only remembers two, although she admits there could have been three – there was no talk of doing anything against the UCO or its work in the Civil Guard, but in the last one, Díez did fully get into the matter and asked the director to reinstate a commander, Rubén Villalba, who had been suspended from employment and salary due to his involvement in the Koldo case. There, according to the statement, the director “flatly rejected” this idea and ended the meeting. “After this meeting, they did not hold” any others, the text says. “The director states that she has never participated in any operation against any unit of the Civil Guard,” the text points out. This last meeting was in April 2025.
Top-level government sources indicate that Sánchez maintains political support because he believes González and is convinced that neither she nor Marlaska did absolutely anything against the UCO or to harm those investigations. In fact, when the Leire case broke a year ago, both met with the leadership of the Civil Guard’s elite investigation group and conveyed their full support.
These government sources indicate that the Director of the Civil Guard, who has not yet offered any public explanation – Marlaska did make brief statements in Luxembourg defending the director and denying any irregularity – only remembers two meetings, not three, and in any case points out that they were held outside the official office and had no content against the Civil Guard.
In the first, they explain, González, who had a relationship with Díez via WhatsApp from when the alleged spy worked at Correos and the director was the government delegate in Madrid, acceded to the request for a brief meeting in which, according to these sources, there wasn’t much political content; it was more of a personal meeting to build a bond, as Díez was unemployed at the time and they both discussed that employment situation without delving into anything more relevant.
In the second, already in April 2025 – the UCO assures there was a third in December 2024 that the Government has not confirmed, although it points out that if it occurred, it would be in the same irrelevant terms as the first – Díez was already fully involved in the operation, on the PSOE payroll, to try to find negative information about the investigators of cases affecting the president’s family. And there, the conversation did indeed turn towards what government sources define as the “conspiracy theory” explained by Díez, in which she implicated the UCO as part of a campaign against the president. And there, always according to this official version of the Executive, came the request to return Commander Villalba to his job, and the meeting ended abruptly with a categorical rejection, after which the relationship with Díez, who continued to send her messages critical of the UCO, was minimized.
In any case, the official version is already changing, because the minister himself had denied last May 28 that there had been any meeting between the director and Leire Díez. “The Director of the Civil Guard has not had any meeting with any person, the one you indicated, Leire or any other, in any terms whatsoever,” he said.
The political situation is very delicate and also falls upon a ministry, the Interior Ministry, which has gone from one fire to another, although Sánchez has always maintained confidence in Marlaska during his eight years in government – he is one of the few who has been there from the beginning-.
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It’s not just the director’s meetings with Leire. It has also become known from the summary that there is an internal war within the Civil Guard itself, in which two generals accuse the previous director, Leonardo Marcos, of ordering them to conclude in a report on the case for which David Sánchez, the president’s brother, is being tried, “that there was nothing”; one of those high-ranking officers also assured that the operational deputy director (DAO) of the armed institute, Lieutenant General Manuel Llamas, urged him to “keep a low profile” and not be “proactive” in cases “that had political implications”.
In this context, Grande-Marlaska maintained a strong defense of the Director of the Civil Guard, who also continues to be supported by the president, according to sources from La Moncloa. “I am aware of her exemplary performance and full honesty,” Grande-Marlaska stated upon his arrival in Luxembourg for a meeting with EU Interior ministers. “I have not known of any action aimed at undermining the work of the State security forces and bodies, and in this case, the Civil Guard. I would not have tolerated it,” he noted.
The Government has therefore stopped denying the meetings, but it flatly rejects the UCO’s hypothesis that they were meetings to make decisions against the investigators. In fact, the report indicates that after those meetings, internal investigations were opened due to leaks of some matters under summary secrecy. Díez insists to her interlocutors that the Director of the Civil Guard is someone she “trusts,” but these government sources insist that the relationship was never close and was cut off as soon as she tried to take it into the realm of conspiracy.
Marlaska asserted that the UCO, under his mandate, has always acted with total freedom. “When this issue arose last year, I immediately met with the UCO chiefs to express my direct and real support as Minister of Interior. I made it clear that the only thing I ask, while supporting their work, is neutrality and professionalism,” explained the head of Interior. At that meeting, González was present, who, in turn, had had a meeting in the same terms with the leadership of the Civil Guard body dedicated to the investigation of economic and corruption crimes: “I am aware. […] It cannot be otherwise, given the situation that had been created and public knowledge.”
Those meetings would have taken place in May of last year, according to Interior. It was then that some audio recordings of Leire Díez, which are part of the investigation, became known, in which she criticized the person who was then head of the UCO, Antonio Balas.
The Minister of Interior has even contrasted his actions with those of “other historical moments in this country.” “The Civil Guard and Police work with absolute independence under the direct orders of judges and prosecutors, as it should be, and supported in all respects by their organic chiefs. And I repeat [that I have] no knowledge of any interference, which I would not have tolerated.”
Marlaska, like Sánchez, maintains support for the Director of the Civil Guard: “I am absolutely aware of the Director of the Civil Guard’s loyalty to legality. And the respect and support for the work of the Civil Guard.”
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