Ready for judgment. The first trial that has brought former minister José Luis Ábalos, his advisor Koldo García, and businessman Víctor de Aldama to the dock concluded early Thursday night with the interventions of Ábalos and García, who used their right to the last word to denounce that the trial was “predetermined” and the Supreme Court has left the process ready for judgment.
Former minister José Luis Ábalos has denounced a series of irregularities that, in his opinion, have tainted the entire process. He began by pointing out the conditions under which he faced the trial. “We come handcuffed, we get up early, we arrive very late at night. It’s a kind of daily torture,” he said, contrasting his situation with that of other defendants who have appeared free.
Regarding the substance of the process, Ábalos stated that the case was “predetermined” from the first order, with a “presumption of guilt” that progressively strengthened. He attacked the parallel trials and leaks that, according to his denunciation, fueled a media campaign orchestrated to create an image of him “so dehumanized” that he became a character “susceptible to committing any crime.”
The former minister also censured that in October 2025 he was forced to testify with a lawyer he had expressly rejected, after that lawyer declared on television the night before that he was not going to prepare his defense. “This is not limiting the exercise of defense, it is simply annulling it,” he stated. Furthermore, he recounted that the investigating judge convened a 505 hearing not at the request of the accusations but on his own initiative, which he interpreted as an attempt to intimidate him into confessing. “If the beginning and the confession come together, what is understood by collaboration?” he asked.
Finally, he denounced that his provisional imprisonment in November was “rushed,” with unresolved appeals, some of which were answered after the abbreviated procedure was opened, and the most important resolved on a Friday so that the reading of charges would take place the following Monday. “Everything points to a closed instruction with haste,” he asserted.
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In his turn to speak, Koldo García tried to dismantle one of the most striking pieces of evidence in the trial: the message to his partner in which he mentioned “a million in chistorras.” García explained that he sent that message the same night of a rally in which Víctor de Aldama was present along with five other businessmen, and that he wrote to his partner to tell her what he had talked about there. According to his account, at that meeting they told him that with his willingness to work and his effort he could solve all his economic problems, for which he would have to spend four years in Latin America. “When I arrive, I’ll explain it to you,” he said in that message, as he recalled. “All that is in the WhatsApps,” he emphasized. The popular accusation had established during the trial that the “chistorras” were 500-euro bills. Additionally, he assured that he was offered that the case “would amount to nothing” if he denounced more people. “I was indeed offered that this would amount to nothing if I spoke,” he stated, adding that there were people who met with him to make that proposal. “What I am saying I can prove,” he emphasized, insisting that he is not “just talking for the sake of talking.” Among those people, he directly pointed to Alberto Durán, the lawyer who leads the PP’s popular accusation. “The PP’s lawyer also offered me to collaborate, of course, lying and deceiving all Spaniards,” he said. According to his account, the pressure included threats against his family environment: “They told me: watch out, your wife and your brother could go to jail, and then your daughter.” García responded by reaffirming his innocence. “I am a humble worker,” he concluded. He also accused media outlets of having offered him money in exchange for telling lies.
After José Luis Ábalos’s last word, the court asked the parties to comment on Koldo García’s request for provisional release and left the process ready for judgment. Only the defense of the former advisor to the Minister of Transport supported the measure, while the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution consider that the flight risk established at the beginning of the trial remains in force.
The former Minister of Transport also denounced the provisional imprisonment weighing on him and his former advisor Koldo García: “We come handcuffed, we get up early, it’s a kind of daily torture.” Earlier, García denounced that “the PP lawyer,” Alberto Durán, who leads the popular accusation, offered him to avoid jail in exchange for implicating more people. “What I am saying I can prove,” emphasized the former advisor. Ábalos’s lawyer argued that businessman Víctor de Aldama paid for the apartment on Princesa Street in Madrid where Jésica Rodríguez lived with the aim of accessing the former minister’s environment and not as a gift to him. Meanwhile, García’s defense criticized during their final report the agreement between Aldama and the Prosecutor’s Office to reduce their sentence request. “The no agreement makes me laugh a lot. We have not been offered this no agreement, because if they offer us ‘say something without evidence,’ we will tell lies,” said lawyer Leticia de la Hoz, adding that if the former advisor had been made that proposal “he would have collaborated that way too.”
This morning, in the reading of his conclusions, anti-corruption prosecutor Alejandro Luzón presented a “genuine criminal organization with concerted and coordinated action with division of functions” that operated around the Ministry of Transport. Luzón also made clear in the presentation of his final report that Pedro Sánchez was not leading the criminal organization now being tried in the Supreme Court: “Certainly, the number one was not the Prime Minister,” he stated. Thus, he dismantled the argument of businessman Víctor de Aldama, who during his testimony pointed to the Prime Minister to link him to the plot.
