It was many hours of testimony, seven and a half. The commissioner Víctor de Aldama was interrogated before the Supreme Court throughout the entire day yesterday. He admitted some of his illicit businesses. He claimed to have paid commissions and gifts to the former minister José Luis Ábalos and his advisor Koldo García. And he also tried to implicate the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, with the shady dealings of the network.
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 rental housing market in Spain is experiencing an unprecedented situation of legal uncertainty after the Congress of Deputies repealed the Government’s royal decree-law that allowed an extraordinary and mandatory extension of up to two years in lease contracts.
The Government wants to accelerate the approval of measures related to the housing rental market. Once it was confirmed that the royal decree-law extending contracts did not have support to be ratified, the Ministry of Housing will once again put on the table a package focused, on the one hand, on fiscal incentives and penalties for property owners and, on the other, on precise regulation of temporary rentals, where a part of traditional leases is being diverted.
Gabriel Rufián likes to provoke with his statements and he certainly succeeds because when he speaks in Congress he always attracts the attention of the members, who stop looking at their mobile phones to listen to him. His preferences in favor of tiktoks over the
The Global Sumud Flotilla, which seeks to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, reported being intercepted by vessels identifying themselves as Israeli while sailing near the coasts of Greece.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo has visited Andalusia again this Wednesday to support Juanma Moreno in his quest to renew the absolute majority. On this occasion, the leader of the PP has been in Roquetas de Mar (Almería) and wanted to claim the line and the “change” that Moreno has given to Andalusia, which must be “extended” to Spain, and has attacked the PSOE candidate María Jesús Montero for corruption as he recalled that she has been in the government during the ERE case and the Koldo case.
The Federal Reserve closed its April meeting with the third consecutive cautious pause in interest rates (3.5%-3.75%), without changing its agenda since the cut last December, amid economic tension and uncertainty generated by the war in Iran. This is supposedly the last meeting led by Jerome Powell at the helm.
The Catalan steel company Celsa considers its darkest period closed. This was confirmed by its president, Rafael Villaseca, and its CEO, Jordi Cazorla, during the presentation of the 2025 results held this Wednesday in Barcelona. After a 28-month transformation process, in which the court ordered the Rubiralta family to exit the capital and hand over the shares to the creditors, the group returned to profitability for the first time during the first quarter of this year 2026.
The presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, held a telephone conversation on Wednesday afternoon in which the Russian leader, according to Kremlin sources, presented proposals to resolve the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program and to propose a ceasefire in Ukraine.