Former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero defended his innocence this Thursday in the first interview offered since his indictment in the Plus Ultra case. The socialist assured on TVE that he had a “null role” in the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra. “I am convinced of my innocence,” he said. “I did not speak with anyone from SEPI or the Government, with any public authority,” he affirmed. Zapatero, furthermore, refused to comment on the defense strategy of businessman Julio Martínez. “I am not going to enter into the defense strategy of any accused,” he said. The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, said upon his arrival at the Lower House that what he expects from the interview are “explanations that clear up doubts.” “From day one I said and maintain that the Zapatero I knew is incompatible with certain accusations that are made. Today, I am convinced that he will be able to demonstrate that incompatibility,” he concluded. Sumar spokesperson, Verónica Barbero, said that “those who decide if someone is guilty or innocent are the courts.”
EL PAÍS offers the latest political news free of charge. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe.
Zapatero attributes Julio Martínez’s accusations to his defense strategy
Former Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has avoided commenting on the accusations of his friend, businessman Julio Martínez, who implicated him in work for Plus Ultra. “I am not going to enter into the defense strategy of any accused. I believe that is also a principle of respect for criminal procedure. I defend myself. I put the facts on the table and reiterate the forceful statements I have made about my null role in the rescue of Plus Ultra, in the creation of offshore companies and, of course, in any action that I neither offered nor was offered nor intervened in anything for an illicit action in the rescue of Plus Ultra,” he insisted.
Zapatero defends his innocence and assures he had a “null role” in the Plus Ultra rescue
Former Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has stated in an interview on TVE that he is innocent, after being indicted in the Plus Ultra case. Zapatero said he had a “null role” in the rescue of the airline Plus Ultra. “I did not speak with anyone from SEPI or the government, with any public authority, it’s not that I didn’t influence, it’s that I didn’t speak with anyone about the Plus Ultra rescue,” he insisted.
Belarra suggests PSOE removed Podemos from key ministries to “do and undo without anyone watching”
The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, criticized former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Congress this Thursday and assured that there are “more than reasonable suspicions” that, in her opinion, remain unexplained.
“There are millions of people who trusted President Zapatero, but the origin of the payments to his daughters’ company, nor his own income, nor what the work for which all that money was received was, has still not been clarified. I believe there is much to clarify, but, unfortunately, I don’t think it will be the interested party himself who clarifies it,” she stated.
Asked if Podemos suspected the Plus Ultra rescue when it was part of the coalition government, Belarra maintained that “the Socialist Party was very interested in us not accessing certain ministries, especially state ministries.” In her opinion, “it was evident what objective they were pursuing,” and added that she hoped that objective was “to be able to continue doing and undoing as they always have without anyone watching.”
Sumar praises Díaz’s ILO candidacy and Podemos replies: “No one rewarded us”
Sumar spokesperson, Verónica Barbero, described the Government’s proposal for Yolanda Díaz to be the Spanish candidate to lead the International Labour Organization (ILO) as “extraordinary.” “For the first time, a woman could be at the head of such an important organization for the world of work,” she highlighted, before assuring that it would be “good news for the working class.” “The Spanish working class already knows what Yolanda Díaz’s policies are and how a labor reform can change your life,” she added.
From Podemos, however, they distanced themselves. Its general secretary, Ione Belarra, stated that “it is evident that trajectory puts everyone in their place” and recalled that “no one rewarded us,” because, she said, “we did what we said we were going to do.”
Sumar, on Zapatero: “Those who decide if someone is guilty or innocent are the courts”
Sumar spokesperson, Verónica Barbero, assured that her parliamentary group has asked “for explanations from former president Zapatero from the beginning.” “One issue must be distinguished: who determines whether a person has committed a crime or not, whether they are innocent or guilty, are the courts,” she affirmed. However, she stressed that “beyond that, there are many other explanations that he must give to the public, because from a former president, what we all expect is that he behaves as someone who presided over a country and that his conduct is also morally irreproachable.”
Barbero also criticized the courts’ interpretation of the figure of the collaborating corruptor. “Lately, I think all citizens are asking themselves if this is going to be a constant Aldama. And Aldama is a thief, that’s the difference. I’m not accusing Julio Martínez of anything, but Aldama is a thief who takes three million and goes home. I understand that we cannot reach that point,” she pointed out. In this regard, she defended that corruptors who collaborate with justice must also be convicted.
Regarding the role of the Executive, Barbero demanded that the judicial procedure “take its course” and that “everything that needs to be investigated is investigated.” She also considered that the Government “must give all explanations,” although she maintained that “it is already doing so” by making available all documents that, she said, prove how the Plus Ultra file was processed. “And, from there, let justice decide,” she concluded.
Patxi López distances himself from Minister Morant’s statements: “It’s not my style”
The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, has distanced himself from the statements of the Minister of Science and leader of the PSPV-PSOE, Diana Morant, who compared the PP and Vox coalition governments under the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to the “criminal governments” of dictator Adolf Hitler. “It’s not my style,” López responded laconically to journalists’ questions in the corridors of the Lower House before the extraordinary plenary session began. “Everyone expresses themselves as they express themselves, it’s not part of my vocabulary,” he added, avoiding the question of whether Morant should apologize to the Popular Party.
Patxi López states that Yolanda Díaz is a “magnificent candidate” for the presidency of the ILO
The parliamentary spokesperson for the PSOE, Patxi López, highlighted this Thursday Yolanda Díaz’s candidacy for the presidency of the International Labour Organization (ILO) at the Executive’s proposal. “I think it’s good news because she has shown in this Government that she is someone who is at the forefront of defending workers’ rights, who cares about creating quality employment, employment with rights, and therefore, I think she is a magnificent candidate to lead the International Labour Organization,” he assured in statements to the media before entering the Congress chamber.
The PSOE expects Zapatero’s interview to provide “explanations that clear up doubts”
The PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, said upon his arrival at the Lower House that what he expects from Zapatero’s interview on TVE is “what we have always expected, explanations that clear up doubts.” “From day one I said and maintain that the Zapatero I knew, with whom I shared policies in very intense moments, is incompatible with certain accusations that are made. Today I am convinced that he will be able to demonstrate that incompatibility,” the spokesperson concluded.
Regarding the PSOE’s involvement in Zapatero’s defense, López assured that “defending what the Constitution and any rule of law establishes, which is the presumption of innocence, is not burning oneself.” As for Julio Martínez’s statement, he maintained that “a confession without evidence or data is nothing more than a defense strategy.”
The PP maintains that Yolanda Díaz “remains silent in the face of Sánchez’s corruption” due to her ILO candidacy
Several Popular Party leaders have vehemently criticized Yolanda Díaz on social media since President Pedro Sánchez announced the Minister of Labor’s candidacy to lead the International Labour Organization (ILO). The PP members’ thesis is that the former Sumar leader “remains silent in the face of socialist corruption” so that she can be promoted to that position. “Well, now we know that Yolanda Díaz’s silence in the face of socialist corruption was not only due to complicity, it was also self-interest,” assured the Deputy Secretary for Sectoral Coordination, Alma Ezcurra. “A prize for being the Minister with the worst unemployment figures in the European Union, and the Minister of data manipulated with permanent discontinuous contracts. At least now we know why she endured the Government’s corruption until the end without saying a word,” argued the Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, Juan Bravo. “There’s a rush to jump from a burning ship,” concluded the Deputy Secretary for Territorial Policy, Elías Bendodo.
Ortega Smith will occupy Ábalos’s seat and office
The Congress Bureau this Thursday designated the new attributions (an office and a commission) for deputy Javier Ortega Smith, after he resigned from the Vox parliamentary group last week and moved to the Mixed Group. Although the decision rests with the Mixed Group, from now on he will occupy the office and sit in the seat that former PSOE Organization Secretary and former Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, once used, the only one available at the moment.
The PP calls for Minister Morant’s resignation after comparing Feijóo to Hitler’s government
The general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, has demanded the resignation of the Minister of Science and Valencian PSPV leader, Diana Morant, who this Wednesday, when the regional budget including “national priority” was being voted on in Les Corts and Alberto Núñez Feijóo was reviewing the political year, compared the PP leader to dictator Adolf Hitler. “She is drawing a path that increasingly resembles those criminal governments like Hitler’s,” Morant asserted in an interview on TVE. These harsh statements were immediately censored by the Popular Party’s social media account, from which the party demanded that the socialist leader apologize. Today, the PP goes a step further and requests her resignation. “The minister’s words portray her and an entire Socialist Party that is in a desperate situation,” Tellado affirmed on Telecinco, where he demanded Morant’s “immediate resignation.” “You cannot go through life with these kinds of statements, they can only occur to a politician who is in as desperate a situation as Morant, nationally and regionally,” added the PP’s general secretary.
Yolanda Díaz faces her candidacy to lead the ILO “with pride and responsibility”
The Second Vice-President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, says she assumes “with pride and enormous responsibility” her candidacy to lead the International Labour Organization (ILO), representing “Spain, Europe, the Global South and the entire international community.”
“The ILO is the common home of work in the world, the one that best represents decent employment and social dialogue between workers and companies,” Díaz said this Thursday on her Bluesky social media account, after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced her candidacy.
In her message, Díaz highlights the main challenges for the labor world as artificial intelligence, climate change and new forms of work on digital platforms, which “are transforming companies and work at full speed.” “We need a strong, modern ILO, on the side of working people, of companies, that promotes women’s rights and passionately defends multilateralism and the great agreements for the 21st century,” Díaz makes clear.
An ILO, she adds, that has social dialogue as a basic pillar and that always counts on those who strengthen the business fabric across the planet, to guarantee a future of quality jobs and sustainable and productive companies. (Efe)
AMNESTY LAW
Puigdemont considers claiming compensation from Spain for the delay in applying the amnesty
The delay in the full deployment of the amnesty law could entail an economic cost for Spain’s finances. This is what Gonzalo Boye, Carles Puigdemont’s lawyer, maintains, and this is what he raises in the complaint he has filed with the European Commission to challenge what he describes as an “improper obstructive ploy” by the Court of Accounts, in order to block the judicial pardon for Puigdemont and other former senior officials of the Generalitat, including former president Artur Mas, who were indicted for the expenses of the procés. The “deliberate breach” of a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union by a judicial body of a Member State “affects the value of the Rule of Law on which the Union is founded,” states the document presented by the lawyer, and warns that he has in his favor the option of claiming compensation for damages. He bases the claim on “the patrimonial responsibility of the State” towards individuals “for violations of Union law attributable to its judicial bodies.”
You can read the full information here
Sánchez, on Díaz’s ILO candidacy: “Her experience and her vocation for consensus make her an excellent candidate”
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured this Thursday that Yolanda Díaz is an “excellent candidate” to lead the International Labour Organization (ILO).
“It is an honor to announce Yolanda Díaz’s candidacy to lead the ILO. For the first time, a woman and our country would be at the head of this fundamental institution for the defense of decent work and social justice. Yolanda has demonstrated with policies and results her commitment to labor rights, social dialogue and the prosperity of Spain. Her experience, her trajectory and her vocation for consensus make her an excellent candidate to lead the ILO,” he affirmed in a message published on X.
YOLANDA DÍAZ
The Government proposes Yolanda Díaz as Director-General of the ILO, the UN agency dedicated to labor
The Government will propose Yolanda Díaz as Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), as EL PAÍS has learned from sources familiar with the decision. The Second Vice-President and Minister of Labor will challenge Gilbert F. Houngbo, who has led the UN agency dedicated to labor relations since 2022. Spanish unions have been criticizing the “Trumpist drift” of the organization under the Togolese’s direction, a message that Díaz deepened in her last intervention at the ILO headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland). “The ILO is in crisis and it is relevant because what is at stake is its mandate. If work is not a commodity, neither can the organization that represents work be,” the Second Vice-President and Minister of Labor said on June 9.
You can read the full information here
The judge asks several banks for information on the accounts of Santos Cerdán’s family
The judge of the National Court, Ismael Moreno, has requested information from several banks regarding various accounts and financial products of the wife, daughter, sister, and brother-in-law of former socialist leader Santos Cerdán, considering that they may also have benefited from funds from the company Servinabar.
The magistrate investigating the so-called Koldo case accedes in an order to the request of the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, supported by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Moreno adopts this measure days after receiving the patrimonial report prepared by the UCO, which detected that Cerdán and his family obtained 323,178 euros in allegedly irregular “benefits” between 2015 and 2024, reaching “their maximums” between 2019 and 2023, “a period that encompasses the so-called ministerial stage of (José Luis) Ábalos” and in which he replaced him as PSOE Organization Secretary.
This report, as the prosecutor explained in supporting the measure, was prepared taking into account Cerdán’s financial products, so, given the “close relationship with people in his family circle,” Anti-Corruption deemed it necessary to extend the information to his family.
All this with the aim of “determining as accurately as possible the economic-patrimonial situation of Santos Cerdán and his environment,” to ascertain his “assets both de jure (nominal) and de facto (attributable), as well as to conduct a study of the origin of his income and the destination of his expenses.” For this reason, the judge has ordered the banks BBVA, Caixabank, Santander, Cajasur Sociedad Cooperativa de Crédito, and Caja Rural de Navarra Sociedad Cooperativa de Crédito to provide information on about twenty accounts.
The judge emphasizes that in this case there is not “a mere suspicion,” but rather “evidence and clear objective indications of the participation of the investigated persons in the commission of crimes of belonging to a criminal organization” and others against public administration.
The magistrate recalls that the patrimonial report provided indications of a “possible undeclared source of income for Santos Cerdán” and pointed to cash income from former ministerial advisor Koldo García and his ex-partner, other income “of apparently unknown origin between 2014 and 2017” for 18,261.56 euros, or a reduction in card expenses from 2019, when Ábalos was at the head of the Ministry of Transport and contracting files were awarded to Acciona that are being investigated.
The judge also mentions expense liquidations declared by the PSOE and Congress for amounts higher than cash withdrawals and expenses observed in Cerdán’s accounts, or that 87.04% of Servinabar’s income comes from Acciona or projects linked to it. And he adds that both Cerdán and people in his family circle would have benefited from goods and services supported by this company, directly or indirectly, such as the salaries of Santos Cerdán’s wife and sister. (Efe)
‘Kitchen Case’
The final phase of the Kitchen trial reveals the joint strategy of Rajoy’s Interior leadership to exculpate themselves
The countdown is already echoing in the Kitchen case trial. The oral hearing on the espionage of former Popular Party treasurer Luis Bárcenas, which began in the National Court on April 6, is in its final stretch with the phase of presenting the defenses’ conclusions. This Wednesday, the lawyers of Jorge Fernández Díaz and Francisco Martínez, respective number one and two of the Ministry of Interior under Mariano Rajoy’s government, presented their final arguments to the court and showed how their strategies have aligned to try to exculpate themselves. “We are facing an intelligence operation, not a parapolice operation,” insisted the former minister’s lawyer, despite Fernández Díaz directly denying any knowledge of Kitchen. “It was a lawful intelligence operation,” the defender of Martínez further elaborated, who, for his part, avoided referring to the SMS messages that implicated the former minister.
You can read the full information here
Vox
The ‘national priority’ agreed by PP and Vox threatens to discriminate against military personnel and other highly mobile professions
The national priority has gone from being a political principle enshrined in the agreements between PP and Vox in four autonomous communities (Extremadura, Aragon, Castilla y León, and Andalusia) to a law. For the first time in Spain, a legally binding norm, the Valencian Generalitat’s Budgets for 2026, includes this slogan coined by Le Pen’s French far-right. The Valencian president, Juan Francisco Perez Llorca, has accepted 99% of Vox’s amendments to pass his government’s accounts, including the controversial principle, despite the Minister of Economy, José Antonio Rovira, having dismissed it on the grounds that it had no place in a “numbers and accounts” project.
You can read the full information here
Good morning. We begin the live narration of the latest political news, this Thursday, July 23. Today, former socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will be interviewed on RTVE for the first time since he was indicted on May 19 for leading “an organized and stable structure aimed at the illicit exercise of influence” whose greatest success would have been the rescue of 53 million euros for the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Congress holds the last extraordinary plenary session of the political year with notable initiatives on the agenda, such as the deficit path, which returns to the chamber after an initial rejection, the write-off of regional debt, and the extension of measures to address the crisis in the Middle East.
The Executive summons the governments of the autonomous communities to discuss various immigration policy issues, including the balance of the extraordinary regularization process for immigrants living in Spain without papers, whose application period ended on June 30 with almost 1.2 million requests.
