Begona Gomez, the wife of Spain’s Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez, has received a court summons for 5 July, in connection with a corruption probe into her business activities. The summons follows the launch of a preliminary investigation into Gomez back in April, and relates to ‘the alleged offences of corruption in the private sector and influence peddling’, according to the court. Sanchez took several days off when the inquiry was launched at the end of April, apparently to consider resigning – a stunt that disappointingly resulted in him deciding to stay on.
If we look at the evidence in the Gomez case, then it does seem flimsy
Coming as it does just before EU elections this Sunday, the timing of the latest development is perfect for Sanchez, who has branded the investigation against his wife as a personal attack orchestrated by his political opponents. ‘What we have here’ said the government’s education minister and spokesperson Pilar Alegria on Tuesday, ‘is a mudslinging campaign by the right and far-right’. Sanchez has denied that there is any truth to the allegations against Gomez, and indeed the evidence so far presented to the court seems to be light; but if this is a smear campaign, as he insists it is, then he’s blaming the wrong people.
The case against Gomez was brought by a small anti-corruption NGO called Manos Limpias, or Clean Hands. This organisation is usually referred to in the media as having ‘links to the far-right’, which is not inaccurate – it’s led by an 82-year-old lawyer named Miguel Bernard, who in the late 1980s and early 1990s headed a party that sought to preserve Francoism. But describing the organisation in this way gives undue weight to an irrelevance.
‘Clean Hands’ may well be an ideologically-driven group solely concerned with opposing left wing causes or figures. But it was a judge that decided to take the Gomez case on and summon her to court next month. Yes, the Popular Party and Vox have used this investigation to bolster their accusations of corruption against Sanchez’s government (although oddly they’ve squandered much better opportunities to try and oust him) – but that’s precisely what the Socialist leader would have done if the situation was turned around. In fact, he’s already deployed such tactics himself: when family members of Isabel Ayuso, the conservative president of Madrid who has become one of Sanchez’s strongest critics, were accused of corruption, Sanchez wasted no time in repeating the accusations in congress.
None of that is surprising. What’s less obvious – and ultimately more important – is whether the judge in the Gomez case is acting with the objectivity required of him, or whether he’s symptomatic of a judiciary that is becoming increasingly influenced by and in the country’s political battles.
Concern about the impartiality of Spain’s legal system, especially its highest courts, has also been expressed in connection with the issue of Catalan independence. In 2019, when nine leading separatists received prison sentences of up to 13 years for arranging an illegal independence referendum two years earlier, their supporters claimed that the Supreme Court had punished them excessively (the imprisoned secessionists were pardoned by Sanchez in 2021, and their crimes have recently been expunged by his controversial amnesty law). They seemed to have a point: after all, Artur Mas, the Catalan president who also arranged an illegal referendum (in 2014), was only fined and banned from public office for doing so.
If we look at the Gomez case in terms of evidence, then it does seem flimsy: Manos Limpias itself has admitted that the online media reports on which it based its original complaint may be false (indeed one of them has already discredited), state prosecutors have called for the case to be dropped and Spain’s Civil Guard has so far found no indications that Gomez has done anything illegal. It was reported this week that the Madrid court has seen evidence against Gomez that ‘goes beyond mere suspicion’, but no further details have been released. If the investigation does proceed on such an apparently insubstantial basis, Sanchez’s suspicions should be focused on the judge, not the Spanish right.
Sanchez’s strategy ahead of the EU elections has been simple. He has presented Spain’s centre-right forces as a threat to the liberal, peaceful status quo of which his government is the sole guardian. Yet the evils that he says he is battling – authoritarianism, the sowing of discord and division, scant respect for civil liberties and an intolerance of dissent – are embodied by the government he himself leads. The question that Sanchez wants voters to ask themselves ahead of Sunday’s vote is: ‘How do I keep the Popular Party and Vox at bay?’ But it should be: ‘Why would I, or anyone else, want to vote for the Socialists?’ No-one in Spain needs to know the outcome of the Gomez case to be asking themselves that question.
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