Begoña Gómez has already been able to recover her passport, according to sources close to the wife of Pedro Sánchez. Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, whom the Provincial Court of Madrid has forced to withdraw the precautionary measures imposed on the president’s partner and her assistant at La Moncloa, finally authorized the president’s partner’s attorney to collect the documentation on her behalf and, according to these sources, this has been done. This return comes after the defense of Gómez’s assistant, Cristina Álvarez, denounced that Peinado was “retaining” her passport by forcing both to appear in person at the court to get them back.
On July 16, the Madrid Court announced that, although it endorsed that the case against Begoña Gómez should continue by jury for two crimes (influence peddling and embezzlement), the investigating magistrate had to lift all precautionary measures imposed on the president’s wife and her advisor, who had been stripped of their passports, prohibited from leaving Spain, and required to appear twice a month before his court. The provincial court unanimously concluded that it did not see the flight risk that Peinado had alleged to impose that harsh blow on Sánchez’s partner, which prevented her from attending the NATO Heads of State and Government summit held this July in Ankara (Turkey) alongside her husband.
The passport withdrawal ordered by Peinado — who, to justify it, even claimed that the police escorting Gómez could help her in an alleged escape — provoked enormous criticism from the PSOE and the Government. The socialists, who have harshly attacked the magistrate’s instruction, considered it a disproportionate and baseless measure. “The ignominy,” summarized Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport. “Too much hatred. Completely unjustifiable,” Cristina Narbona, party president, added.
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The Public Prosecutor’s Office also submitted a very harsh statement to censure the judge’s ruling. The public ministry attacked Peinado for his “lack of rigor and restraint” in restricting Sánchez’s wife’s movements, as well as criticizing him for “deviating” from the law; wanting to give “legal status” to “unreal” data; and for devising a “conspiracy” to claim that the escort would help her in her “possible” escape abroad.
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