Begoña Gómez, wife of the Prime Minister, is on the verge of the dock after two years and three months of a controversial investigation led by Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, head of the 41st Investigative Court of Madrid. During this time, Peinado’s decisions (charges, searches, and other proceedings…) accumulated three complaints for alleged irregularities and numerous appeals, in which businessman Carlos Barrabés and his assistant at La Moncloa, Cristina Álvarez, also appear as suspects. The numerous appeals have been constantly brought before the Provincial Court of Madrid for resolution. From that vast amount of documents, this court resolved the latest this Thursday: it gives the green light for the process to continue by popular jury for the crimes of influence peddling and embezzlement, and has annulled the charges of business corruption and misappropriation.
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The resolutions of the appeals by this court reflect an ambiguous relationship with Peinado, whom it sometimes reproached for his actions and at other times supported, as in this latest decisive step. These are the most relevant appeals decided by the Provincial Court:
The rejection of the first dismissal of the case (May 29, 2024). The court upheld the case after the first appeals were filed, although it noted that the complaint by the pseudo-union Manos Limpias filed on April 8 against Gómez contains “implausible” parts and “erroneous data,” so it ordered the investigation to focus exclusively on the aid to the UTE linked to businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés.
The annulment of the searches on businessman Barrabés (January 29, 2025). The Court accepted Barrabés’ defense appeal and annulled the search that Peinado ordered in August of that year at the headquarters of his companies, where several mobile phones and hard drives were seized. “The real truth cannot be obtained at any cost. Not everything is lawful in the discovery of the truth. Only that which is compatible with the defense of the core element of fundamental rights,” the judges stated, who also ordered the analysis of the suspect’s mobile phone to be stopped.
The dismissal of the Complutense University rector (May 16, 2025). The Court overturned the charges against Joaquín Goyache, rector of the Complutense University of Madrid, and Juan José Güemes, senior official of the Instituto de Empresa (IE) and regional councilor during the Madrid governments of Esperanza Aguirre (PP). “It lacks foundation,” the judges ruled. In a forceful resolution, they also reproached Peinado for charging Güemes, Goyache, Barrabés, and Cristina Álvarez (Gómez’s assistant) after taking their statements as witnesses. That is, without a lawyer and with the obligation to tell the truth.
The Court points to La Moncloa (June 25, 2025). In this appeal, the court not only ratified the charges of influence peddling and business corruption against Gómez’s assistant but also endorsed Peinado’s investigation into the alleged embezzlement in her hiring. Not only that: it pointed to Moncloa, noting an “institutionalized power structure” that allowed “a clear and blatant deviation” from the work Álvarez was supposed to perform as the assistant to the Prime Minister’s wife.
The halt to investigating the Air Europa bailout (November 13, 2025). The court stopped Peinado’s latest attempt to investigate the government’s bailout of the airline in 2020 after accepting the appeals of Gómez’s defense and the Prosecutor’s Office. The Court stated that “the challenged resolution lacks the necessary motivation.”
The dismissal of the Government delegate in Madrid (December 4, 2025). The Court ordered the judge to dismiss Francisco Martín Aguirre, Government delegate and Secretary General of the Presidency from 2021 to 2023, considering that the investigator did not provide “the slightest indication” that, while holding a position at La Moncloa, he “participated” in an alleged embezzlement crime related to Álvarez’s hiring.
Support for the embezzlement investigation (December 19, 2025). It was a boost for Peinado. The Court endorsed the charges against the Prime Minister’s wife and her assistant for the alleged hiring. The judges argued that the behaviors described by Peinado in his rulings “seem to fit the criminal figure of embezzlement.”
The Court annuls the order to request emails from La Moncloa (December 22, 2025). The judges considered that Peinado’s decision to demand from the Presidency of the Government all emails that Gómez sent and received from her official La Moncloa account from July 2018 to the present was not sufficiently motivated and violated “the principles of proportionality, necessity, and suitability.”
The reproach for “lack of foundation” (January 20, 2026). The Court annulled the judge’s decision to send Gómez to a trial by popular jury for not specifying “which specific behaviors” justified this step and “what is the incriminatory, indicative, and provisional basis […], that give solidity and consistency to the accusatory hypothesis.” The court reproached Peinado for not even making “a minimal argumentative effort” to transform the case into a jury trial, for which “a minimal factual delimitation” is needed. However, it did not close the door to this possibility and ordered the case to be returned to the previous phase.
The Court endorses that a popular jury try Gómez (July 16, 2026). The latest resolution of the Court has been to exclude the crimes of business corruption and misappropriation and supports that a popular jury try her, Barrabés, and Álvarez for embezzlement and influence peddling. On the other hand, it has also asked Peinado to return the passport to Gómez and her assistant at La Moncloa ―which had previously been withdrawn on June 20― and to suspend the obligation to appear twice a month before his court. After this resolution, the parties must again request the opening of the trial and modify their conclusions.
