Officials of the airline Plus Ultra sought ways to halt the investigation opened regarding the company’s bailout with 53 million euros from the Government. One of them was the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The PP of Catalonia will hold its congress on June 27 with the aim of relaunching the project eight years after the last conclave. Alejandro Fernández (Tarragona, 1976) is running for re-election as president, having overcome tensions with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with the intention of strengthening the party and growing as an alternative.
The image of a railway crossing in an advertisement was used in 2017 to call for the 1-O and end up before the judge. “You were born with the ability to decide. Will you give up?”. Now the railway crossing is played by ERC, but not heading towards independence, rather between Vilanova i la…
In the absence, for the moment, of that electoral super Sunday that hovers over every political conversation in Madrid after the regional collapse recorded by the PSOE in the recent elections, the right has celebrated its own reivindicative super Saturday this Saturday in which several tens of thousands of people have marched between Colón Square and the Victory Arch, in Moncloa, called by Sociedad Civil Española to demand the resignation of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was a political asset and a business asset. He was, at least, until this Tuesday when his indictment in the National Court for leading an influence network broke out. The former president was a draw because of his relations with Pedro Sánchez’s government, but not only for that. The case includes a list of businessmen, lawyers, and politicians who had connections with him, and in some cases those ties were linked to commercial and economic relations.
The roller coasters of Spanish politics do not rest. Now it is José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who is descending vertiginously. The order from the judge of the National Court José Luis Calama, made public this week, states that the former Prime Minister (2004-2011) must undergo a thorough investigation for an alleged crime of influence peddling and money laundering in the management of the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic. The order is not an indictment. It is a reasoned exposition of the elements that lead to the opening of a judicial investigation, with the mandatory notice to the people who become investigated. (Until 2015, the term was accused, but the Criminal Procedure Law was modified in favor of softer language). Accused or investigated, Zapatero is currently on the conveyor belt of public scandal. Felipe González, his great adversary in the PSOE since Zapatero promoted the reform of the Statute of Catalonia, called the order “impressive” yesterday and said he felt “great sadness” for what is happening.
The dotted line through which the tentacles of the plot allegedly led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero extend internationally has a special stop in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). The case reveals that the former president sought to set up a commercial lobby between the United Arab Emirates, Spain, and Latin America to expand his influence. The idea, together with his trusted man Julio Martínez, and an expert in commercial transactions in the Arab country, Tomás Guerrero Blanco, was to help Arab companies enter the Spanish or Latin American market and vice versa.
The opposition groups already demanded a few days ago in the Interior commission of the Parliament the dismissal of the councilor of the department, Núria Parlon, and the general director of the Police, Josep Lluís Trapero, for infiltrating agents of the Mossos d’Esquadra in a teachers’ assembly within the framework of the protests of the educational sector, an act for which both leaders apologized to the representatives of the teachers.
The case against Vito Quiles for assaulting the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez, has been dismissed as it could not be proven that there are “facts of criminal relevance” in the recordings that the far-right agitator shared on his social media.
The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has blocked the accounts of the former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero while investigating the flow of money that he could have received for his influences among other things so that the Government approved the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra. Specifically, he has agreed to block the balances of his accounts up to the limit of 490,780 euros, which is the amount received from the company Análisis Relevante, whose administrator is his friend and also investigated Julio Martínez Martínez.