Turn in the trial against David Sánchez. Yesterday, several officials from the Diputación de Badajoz testified that they do not recall any irregularity in the hiring of the brother of the Prime Minister as coordinator of the conservatories in 2017. They also assured that David Sánchez was “very hardworking.” But today the tables have turned with the statement of Cristina de Frutos, another candidate for that job position: “A friend told me three days before the interview that that position was for David Sánchez.”
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The witness recounted that she found out from a colleague, Luis Suárez, director of the Plasencia conservatory, that the Diputación de Badajoz was opening a position for coordinator of the music conservatories. “My friend sent me the guidelines and I thought it was an ideal position for me because it combined my two passions, teaching and orchestra conducting,” Frutos, who is a music teacher, said. So she prepared a project determined to apply for the call.
But three days before the interview, her friend sent her a WhatsApp where “he told me he knew that position was for Pedro Sánchez’s brother.” “I asked who Pedro was and my friend showed me a photo. I knew who he was and decided not to apply for the position,” the witness continued. But the day before the interview she received a call from the Diputación de Badajoz: “they told me to show up because they liked my proposal.” So Frutos thought “that rumors should not be trusted” and went punctually to the interview.
She was received by a kind of panel made up of a woman and two men and there the candidate for coordinator of the conservatories realized that “they were not interested, they did not listen to me and they did not ask me any questions.” Also, “when saying goodbye, they told me they wished me good luck in my professional life and I already knew I was not going to be selected.” Frutos declared that the Diputación de Badajoz did not send her the results of the competition and that she found out “that the position had been given to David Sánchez through the media.”
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The Diputación’s decision was based on the fact that “Sánchez had answered the questions very well” and that irritated Frutos because “they had not asked me any questions.” The candidate for the position did not want to stir things up further, since “after all, I already had a job.” But when Álvaro Jaén, the former Podemos deputy in the Assembly of Extremadura who uncovered the case, contacted her, “I explained everything that had happened to me.” Years later, in 2025 when the matter was already making headlines in the media, Frutos wrote an email to the Prosecutor’s Office to “explain my situation and point out that there was no equal opportunity in that selection process.” “The prosecutor never replied,” she added.
Jaén declared last night that when he saw the competition guidelines for the coordinator of conservatories position, they seemed “strange” to him. Frutos supported that version and recounted that “I was not informed about the scoring criteria for the job position” and that “it seemed suspicious to me that the generic university degree was required and not a music teacher degree as would have been normal.” Also, Frutos explained that she was scored zero in the language section even though she speaks “English, Italian, and Portuguese.” One of the lawyers for the prosecution added that “according to the guidelines, a project had to be submitted and of the eleven candidates, Sánchez was the only one who did not submit one.”
This morning Ángel Seco, David Sánchez’s colleague at the Diputación de Badajoz for the management of the Young Opera project, also testified. During the investigation, David Sánchez said he dealt daily with Seco, but today the witness stated that “we talked occasionally if there was a project.” “David was involved in the most artistic part,” he emphasized. He also explained that he was tasked with “deciding which tasks could be assigned to the Office of Performing Arts.” That office was David Sánchez’s second position when his job was modified in 2022. Nevertheless, Seco admitted that he does not know what the Office of Performing Arts is.
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