“If there are new irregular behaviors, we will act with the same firmness as we have acted before,” Pedro Sánchez guaranteed this Wednesday from Rome, after the meeting he held with Pope Leo XIV while agents from the Civil Guard’s central operative unit (UCO) returned to the PSOE headquarters to request information about the Leire Díez case.
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The head of the Executive did not want to “underestimate the seriousness of the ongoing investigation” by the National Court judge Santiago Pedraz that this morning led UCO agents back to the PSOE headquarters, and showed his “full cooperation with justice.” A position he highlighted as relevant, “because before it was quite the opposite,” and recalled that the Popular Party used the state security forces and justice “to obstruct judicial investigations.”
Sánchez pointed out that when the Leire Díez case broke out, more than a year ago, the PSOE already acted against her “immediately,” expelling her from the party membership. “We will see how these investigations end,” he argued. And he emphasized his “firm commitment,” as head of the Executive and as secretary general of the PSOE, that “we will respond with the firmness with which we have always responded, in case new information about it becomes known.”
But Sánchez stressed that all these judicial investigations, which he insisted should not be downplayed, “do not in any way challenge” the work of the Government and the progressive forces in favor of social and economic advances in the last eight years of governance. “And that is what we will continue to do until the end of the legislature,” he assured, ruling out an early election.
The head of the Executive met this Wednesday at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV, amid a political storm over the judicial indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the cases opened against his wife and brother, Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez, while agents from the Civil Guard’s central operative unit (UCO) returned to the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz, this time to request information about the case of former member Leire Díez. Searches were also carried out at properties of former organization secretary Santos Cerdán and veteran former Andalusian leader Gaspar Zarrías, and the current Ferraz manager, Ana Fuentes, was also indicted. The pressure on the head of the Executive is maximum, absolute.
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Sánchez, who delayed his press conference in Rome by about half an hour precisely to get informed about what was happening at that moment at the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz, began by once again supporting Zapatero after the secrecy of the case file was lifted following the former president’s indictment. “Honestly, I said it in the General Courts and I reaffirm it here today. Full cooperation with Justice, full respect for the presumption of innocence of President Zapatero, and all my support for President Zapatero,” he reiterated, as he did last Wednesday in the Congress plenary. “There is no reason to change that position,” he assured.
The Prime Minister said he learned from the questions the press asked him that the judge also indicted the current PSOE manager, Ana María Fuentes, and also focused on the former deputy to Santos Cerdán in the Ferraz organization secretariat, Juan Francisco Serrano – who still holds a seat on the party’s federal executive – and on his own former chief of staff at the party headquarters and later president of Correos, Juan Manuel Serrano. “I did not know,” he admitted. “Ana María Fuentes is a woman who has managed the PSOE accounts scrupulously,” he emphasized.
“I insist, I do not downplay the importance or seriousness of the ongoing investigation. But with the same clarity I say that the moment new information arises about issues affecting irregular activities or attitudes, the PSOE will act firmly, as we have always done,” he reiterated. “So far, we do not have much more information,” he argued.
And he wanted to emphasize again that all these judicial investigations “in no way challenge all the achievements this country is reaching in very difficult times like the present, and therefore, we will continue in that task.”
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