Orchestra conductor Cristina de Frutos appeared this Tuesday at the Provincial Court of Badajoz as one of the key witnesses for the accusations in the case that puts David Sánchez, brother of the Prime Minister; the former leader of the Extremadura PSOE Miguel Ángel Gallardo; and nine other people on trial. And the defenses, especially that of Pedro Sánchez’s relative, have thoroughly worked to dismantle her testimony, in which she pointed to alleged irregularities in the awarding of the senior management position of the Badajoz provincial council to which she aspired, but which was ultimately awarded to David Sánchez. During her interrogation, lawyer Emilio Cortés asked her to explain why, if she suspected that the position was pre-assigned and felt wronged, she did not report it in 2017 along with other candidates. “Well, first of all, because I didn’t know [the other candidates]. Secondly, because I decided not to. I thought it was something too high up, honestly. And thirdly, because I had my job. And that’s it. It’s not like my life depended on it,” she stated via videoconference.
De Frutos is the second —and last— of the 11 candidates who submitted their application for the coordinator position of the Badajoz Provincial Conservatories that year to testify as a witness. On Monday, Nerses Avakimyam Gasparov had done so, who stated that he never heard that the position was previously assigned to the president’s brother and, in fact, affirmed that he was not aware of any irregularity, as he had already stated when called to testify during the investigation phase by Judge Beatriz Biedma. However, De Frutos maintained a completely different version this Tuesday.
The orchestra conductor has ratified her previous testimony in court in which she recounted that she met with two other candidates just before the interview for the position and heard them comment that the brother of the socialist leader was applying. She also maintained that two or three days earlier the director of the Plasencia Conservatory, Antonio Luis Suárez —who has not been called as a witness in the trial— had sent her a WhatsApp message stating that people from the Badajoz Provincial Council told him that the position was pre-assigned to David Sánchez, so, according to her, she doubted whether to attend the interview, although she finally did so due to the insistence of the public body itself.
In response to the accusations, De Frutos explained that during the interview to apply for the position —held on June 27, 2017— she presented her project, but emphasized that the three members of the evaluation committee showed no interest. “They didn’t listen to me much, they didn’t ask me questions, and they told me to have good luck in my professional life. That’s why I thought they weren’t interested,” she pointed out. Then, in response to the defenses, she specified that the project she presented was contained in a “two-page” “outline” —which addressed her objectives, methodology, and improvement measures— and was accompanied by her resume. She added that she did not get to see the others’ projects.
The witness stated that later she was contacted by Podemos deputy in the Extremadura Assembly Álvaro Jaén, who testified this Monday. She also recounted that she even sent a letter to the Prosecutor’s Office to express her doubts about the awarding process, although she never received a response. After going to the press, De Frutos was called to testify in court. Since then, she was one of the key pieces of the prosecution to support their request for three years in prison for David Sánchez, and the interrogation by his lawyers this Tuesday followed that line. On the contrary, the Prosecutor’s Office and the defenses have tried to undermine her statements.
The public prosecutor’s representative, Begoña García Boró, reminded the orchestra conductor that the letter she sent to the Prosecutor’s Office was not really a complaint, but a text in which she simply stated that she felt discriminated against. “I felt that there had not been equal opportunities,” De Frutos emphasized this Tuesday, although she later admitted that she did not file an appeal nor request clarification. The Prosecutor’s Office also highlighted that the person who, according to her, had informed her of the alleged pre-assignment of the position had denied it in the media, where he even said that De Frutos had misunderstood him.
“I am neither disappointed nor frustrated, I felt there was inequality of opportunity”
For his part, David Sánchez’s defense focused on trying to prove that De Frutos maintained her suspicions about the process for the position she aspired to out of resentment for not having obtained it. She flatly denied it: “I am neither disappointed nor frustrated, I felt there was inequality of opportunity.”
Likewise, the lawyer emphasized the relationship that she and Pedro Sánchez’s brother later maintained after they both met on May 16, 2023, in the theater dressing rooms after the performance of La Traviata and that, in fact, De Frutos invited him to attend a concert she was going to conduct and he offered to take charge of the staging in August 2024 of the opera Carmen, but she declined. The witness justified this decision. “Seeing the financial conditions, it wasn’t enough for me to cover travel and living expenses,” she explained.
David Sánchez’s defense then focused on De Frutos’s decision not to file a complaint along with the other candidates she heard talking about the president’s brother’s involvement in the moments before the interview for the position. “Why didn’t you join forces to stop an illegal situation?” the lawyer asked her. “I didn’t go there thinking it was illegal. I went thinking I had a chance. I have no reason to suspect that they would give it to one or another,” she emphasized.
