Víctor de Aldama had to prove before the Supreme Court that he is telling the truth; it is his lifeline to have his collaboration with justice and repentance recognized and to achieve a considerable reduction of the sentence. To do this, he had to betray former minister José Luis Ábalos and his loyal squire Koldo García. And he did. Eight hours of testimony in which he recounted how he was paying them a kind of salary of 10,000 euros per month, in addition to other gifts including rents, vacations, apartments, motorcycles, cars, and even medical treatments, totaling between three and a half and four million. These amounts were qualified, but the estimate of what the former minister and his advisor received would be that, according to the commission agent’s version. The money did not all come out of his pocket. Aldama put in part, and other companies seeking contracts – with which he acted as a link – paid the rest. Part went to the minister and the advisor and another part to the PSOE, always according to his version.

The extraordinary meeting of EU interior ministers was not the showdown many anticipated, but a delicate exercise in political balance. The meeting, requested by 22 Member States at the initiative of Italy and Denmark following the Ceuta migration crisis, ended with a declaration of principles but, as expected, without concrete decisions. Italy eased tensions with Pedro Sánchez’s government but now proposes that the EU lead the relationship with Morocco to contain migratory surges at the southern border.

The Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard also appeared yesterday at the headquarters of the armed institute, in the center of Madrid. It did so to collect the documentation of some internal files that were opened against several agents for alleged leaks to the members of the network that intended to sabotage investigations related to the PSOE sphere. Curiously, the delegation of civil guards that burst into the building of the General Directorate was led by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Balas, the officer whom the “plumbing” of Ferraz, headed by the former Secretary of Organization Santos Cerdán and the former militant Leire Díez, wanted to see “better dead” so that “he would not become the executioner of everyone.”