Política

The Government’s parliamentary partners are expressing increasing concern and alarm following the judicial indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for several alleged corruption offenses linked to the multimillion-dollar economic bailout of the airline Plus Ultra during the pandemic crisis. However, at least for now, the Executive does not see this parliamentary support at risk to keep afloat a legislature that Pedro Sánchez intends to complete within a year, by July 2027.

A report from the State Society of Industrial Participations (SEPI) concludes that the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra was “legal and transparent.” SEPI issues this study in response to the suspicions of the National Court judge José Luis Calama, who is investigating the Zapatero case and believes that this bailout was not lawful. In the order issued by the magistrate, it is considered that Plus Ultra was in a state of bankruptcy at the time of the bailout. Consequently, the government of Pedro Sánchez could not save it since the applicable European law at that time, March 2021, strictly prohibited rescuing companies in dissolution.

The Government has defended this Thursday, with an extensive document, the loan of 53 million euros granted on March 9, 2021 to the airline Plus Ultra. A financial aid, charged to the support fund for the solvency of strategic companies after the coronavirus pandemic crisis, now in the eye of the legal, political, and media storm following the indictment of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for alleged corruption crimes that would have their origin in this Executive rescue.

The eight companies identified by Judge José Luis Calama for serving to channel payments to former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero barely function as shells without activity or employees, through which money flows in and out via few accounting entries, as can be seen in their accounts filed with the Mercantile Registry.

Comuns has given their approval to the Generalitat’s budget agreement for this year after reaching a pact with the Govern on an update to the agreement already reached in February, which highlights an additional investment of 2.5 billion euros in housing policies that are added to those already agreed upon then, 1.2 billion for the Pla de Barris, and a new law to convert empty offices and premises into official protected housing (HPO).

The broker Víctor de Aldama has denied this Thursday before the judge of the National Court Ismael Moreno that neither Francina Armengol, current president of the Congress of Deputies, in her time as president of the Balearic Islands, nor anyone from her government asked for or received commissions for the contract that was awarded to her company, Soluciones de Gestión, for the acquisition of medical supplies during the pandemic.

Pedro Sánchez has requested a meeting with Giorgia Meloni on the occasion of her visit to Rome next week. The prime minister, according to La Vanguardia from sources within the Italian Government, has accepted the proposal for a meeting at the Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Executive, but for the moment the schedules do not quite align. The contacts, these same sources explain, are ongoing.

The spokesperson for Izquierda Unida, Enrique Santiago, stated this Thursday that he “has no doubt” that the United States “could have a political interest” in causing “a political crisis in the Government of Spain” and also “to punish those who may have worked to evade the illegal sanctions unilaterally imposed by the United States on Venezuela” for their collaboration in the investigation against the former president of the government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for, among other crimes, influence peddling in the case of the bailout of the airline Plus Ultra.

The Minister of the Presidency of the Generalitat, Albert Dalmau, announced today in the Parliament, during the voting on amendments to the Catalan Public Employment Bill, the creation “for the first time” in Catalonia of 540 positions for national civil servants authorized to fill vacancies for secretaries and auditors in Catalonia. Dalmau assured that the process to implement these positions will be approved next week within the Catalan government.

El Govern de Salvador Illa will have its first budgets and Catalonia will have validated accounts, something that had not happened since 2023. The Catalan Executive will be able to approve the budget project in July after securing the 68 votes necessary for it. After closing the pact with Esquerra Republicana last Tuesday, it remained to regain the six votes from Comuns, who had requested to update the agreement they sealed in February because they consider these will be the only budgets of the legislature.