Begoña Gómez’s defense has presented an expert report explaining that there is no regulation on the limits of the activity of the Prime Minister’s wife, nor on the figure of the advisor, and makes a comparison with all the wives of all previous presidents from Adolfo Suárez to Pedro Sánchez himself. The document reflects how former PP president Mariano Rajoy hired two people to care for his father, or an advisor for José María Aznar to organize his daughter’s wedding.
The expert report —signed by Julio Víctor González, professor of administrative law at the Complutense University of Madrid, and accessed by EL PAÍS— states that, first, from 1977 to 1982, there is not much information about a specialized assistant for the presidents’ partners, but it recounts, for example, how Adolfo Suárez’s wife, Amparo Illana, carried out charitable acts with the Roma people that included meetings or being a godmother at a baptism “which could not have been developed without support staff.”
From 1982, with the arrival of Felipe González, his wife, Carmen Romero López, developed her activity beyond the institutional role as a high school teacher, a member of the Executive Commission of the UGT Teaching Federation for a decade, and subsequently, a PSOE deputy for Cádiz. During that time, she had a team of two people, in addition to having La Moncloa staff at her disposal for institutional matters. Romero “was thus the first wife of a president,” the document indicates, “who had to reconcile her professional activity with the obligations derived from her husband’s public office.”
The arrival of José María Aznar at the presidential palace in 1996 represented “the greatest boost to the figure of the Prime Minister’s wife’s assistant.” Ana Botella ceased to be a state official and undertook an “intense” activity in public and private events, created a foundation (Fundación Integra), and in 2003 ran as a councilor on the PP lists for the Madrid City Council. For this, she had support staff and even had to answer a parliamentary question in which she stated that she had two people at her disposal. The expert report cites a news item from EL PAÍS which adds that the team, in addition to two civil servants, included a press chief. The professor relies on the press of the time, which spoke “with absolute naturalness” of the functions of these assistants who were present at the preparations for the wedding of Ana Botella and Aznar’s daughter, at a private event for a designer, or on their trips.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero’s wife, Sonsoles Espinosa, had a “very limited” public presence and maintained her professional activity as a singer. As with Carmen Romero, the report says, there was “social and media pressure for her to prioritize her unwritten institutional role as the president’s wife,” but she did not stop developing “her professional activity freely” because of it. And, as with Ana Botella, the archives show private events where Espinosa was accompanied by her advisors, such as a series of concerts in Paris in 2007.
Finally, Mariano Rajoy’s wife, from 2012 onwards, did resign from her previous job and maintained a “low profile.” Nevertheless, she had three assistants for herself, in addition to two more assistants “for the personal care of Rajoy’s father.” The hiring of these two people “generated public outcry.”