Magistrate José Luis Calama, investigating judge of the Plus Ultra case, takes a new step in the investigation opened against former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The judge has decided to question Julio Martínez Sola, president of the airline, and its CEO, Roberto Roselli, on September 7 and 8, according to a resolution dated this Friday. Calama takes this initiative after both sent separate letters to the Audiencia Nacional to implicate the former socialist leader in obtaining public aid; in line with the account given by Julio Martínez Martínez, owner of the consultancy Análisis Relevante, who stated that the former PSOE leader “set the steps to follow” in the negotiations that led to the 53 million euro bailout that the airline received from the Government during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Martínez Sola and Roselli were already charged. But, like the judge, the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office also considered it necessary to summon them again after they sent those letters to the Audiencia Nacional, according to sources from the public ministry. After being arrested by the National Police in December 2025, both exercised their right not to testify. And in fact, for months, the president of Plus Ultra publicly denied any irregularity: “There was no preferential treatment or interference,” he said in a Senate investigation committee. However, this week they made a U-turn on that version, joining Julio Martínez Martínez’s strategy of opening up to “collaborate” with justice.
In the resolution issued this Friday, Calama sets the interrogation of Julio Martínez Sola, president of Plus Ultra, for 9:00 AM on September 7. Roberto Roselli, current CEO of the company and financial director at the time of the bailout negotiations, has been summoned at the same time on the 8th. Meanwhile, the judge is still pending to set a date for the statements of the president’s daughters and his secretary, Gertrudis Alcázar, who are also charged.
In the letters sent to the Audiencia, Sola and Roselli admitted that neither of them had “conclusive evidence of the specific actions carried out [by the former president] to influence or favor the granting of the bailout to Plus Ultra by SEPI [State Society of Industrial Participations],” for which they allegedly paid a commission exceeding half a million euros. But the airline’s president insisted that it “was assumed that Martínez Martínez should be contracted for this purpose, aware that he had a relationship with Zapatero, also assuming the payment of large sums of money (1%) for such work which, euphemistically, they called ‘accompaniment’.”
Julio Martínez Martínez, who testified last Tuesday before the judge, painted a similar scenario. The owner of Análisis Relevante maintains that the consultancy and Plus Ultra signed a contract in July 2020 for 5,000 euros per month “for the advice that Zapatero had been providing since May.” Another contract was added to this one, directly linked to obtaining the bailout, which stipulated the payment by the airline of a 1% commission on the financing obtained (around 530,000 euros) as “consideration for the services rendered and the success of the operation” before SEPI. The Police seized a copy of this document during the search of Martínez Martínez’s home.
Double blow to Zapatero
The U-turn by Plus Ultra’s leadership has dealt a severe blow to Zapatero’s defense strategy, as it contradicts his version. Julio Martínez Sola asserts that he had contacts with the former president and that, in fact, the former head of the Executive telephoned him on April 30, 2020, as maintained by investigators from the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police. Zapatero denies this claim, but the Plus Ultra executive states that, in that supposed 10-minute conversation, he explained the difficult financial situation his company was going through and the need to access funds from the Official Credit Institute (ICO). According to his account, the former PSOE leader then told him that “his intervention could be helpful and that he would make the appropriate arrangements,” but that all “communications” would henceforth be through a person “of his trust,” referring to Julio Martínez Martínez.
This has not been the only setback the former President of the Government has received in recent days. The Prosecutor’s Office has also asked the magistrate to request an extended report on the jewels seized from Zapatero, to try to gather more data on when the pieces were set and to delve into their current market price. According to legal sources, Calama has not yet resolved this issue. But he has already rejected the “general nullity” of the Plus Ultra case, which the politician requested in June due to an alleged violation of his fundamental rights.
The investigating judge concludes that Zapatero raised this issue “outside” the 20-day period stipulated by law from the moment “material access” to the summary is obtained. Calama details that the socialist’s defense could have known the content on May 25 and that the twentieth business day from that date was June 22, although the rule provides for an extension until 3:00 PM on June 23. However, the former PSOE leader did not file his claim until June 25. “Therefore, it is untimely, and the consequence can be none other than its inadmissibility,” rules the judge, who emphasizes: “Untimeliness deprives the judicial body of jurisdiction to examine the merits of the alleged injury, as the incident cannot operate as a mechanism to question investigative decisions that should have been challenged in due time by filing the appropriate appeals against them.”
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