A week of legal reckoning for Spain’s two main political groups began on Monday after a former conservative interior minister went on trial for allegedly spying on a former party treasurer who threatened to expose corruption.
The case against Jorge Fernández Díaz, who served between 2011 and 2016 under former Popular Party (PP) prime minister Mariano Rajoy, comes ahead of another high-profile trial that has further damaged the ruling Socialists and public trust in Spain’s political class.
Fernandez Diaz and former senior interior ministry officials are accused of a conspiracy to spy on and silence former PP treasurer Luis Barcenas, using public money and without any legal basis.
Barcenas, who served as party treasurer until 2009, was taken into custody in 2013 for irregularities in the PP’s accounts and had threatened to reveal secrets about the party’s illegal financing because he did not feel supported enough.
In an interview published in world daily on Saturday, Barcenas said it was “impossible that an operation of this type could have been carried out without the knowledge of the party’s highest authorities”. He did not mention Rajoy by name.
The affair combined with other corruption cases that tainted and toppled Rajoy’s government in 2018 and brought current Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to power.
Prosecutors are seeking 15 years in prison for Fernández Diaz on charges that include embezzlement and invasion of privacy.
The trial at Spain’s highest criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional, will last three months and hear more than 100 witnesses, including Rajoy, Barcenas and senior PP officials at the time.
On Tuesday, former Socialist transport minister Jose Luis Abalos, once Sanchez’s right-hand man, goes on trial for alleged corruption in the procurement of masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, in a case that has thrown the future of the minority government into doubt.
(sma)
