In the midst of a political storm following the judicial indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for alleged corruption crimes linked to the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra for 53 million euros in 2021, and now awaiting the National Court judge José Luis Calama to lift the secrecy of the investigation file, Pedro Sánchez has maintained his public schedule this Monday unaffected by this crisis, and has even tried to convey calm, despite the alarm spreading within the Government and the PSOE over the uncertainty of how this process will evolve. And how far it will escalate.

In recent weeks there had been a tense calm in the Plus Ultra case. Since José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero testified as the alleged leader of an influence peddling scheme on June 17, things began to move. He denied everything, distanced himself from any management in favor of the airline. He left the responsibility, in any case, to Julio Martínez Martínez. The businessman’s position was compromised and he had two options: to acknowledge his dealings with Plus Ultra, the creation of an offshore company in Dubai, and that his relationship with Zapatero was limited to paying him for consulting, as the former president claimed; or to follow the path of the corrupter in the Mask case, Víctor de Aldama, admit the facts, at least in part, and let the big catch fall.