The first witnesses deflated the accusations against David Sánchez yesterday. “I don’t remember,” “I have no evidence,” or “there were no irregularities” were the main statements during the long judicial day. The brother of the Prime Minister sits on the bench in the Badajoz Court accused of crimes of malfeasance and influence peddling for allegedly having been given a job at the Badajoz Provincial Council in 2017.
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The seven popular accusations participating in the process, in which the Public Prosecutor does not accuse, maintain that the then president of the Badajoz Provincial Council, the socialist Miguel Ángel Gallardo, created a position tailored for David Sánchez as coordinator of the conservatories. They also believe that a change in Sánchez’s position, who in 2022 became director of the Performing Arts Office, could have been irregular, a position that, in principle, did not require incompatibility. They also see the hiring of Luis Carrero, a friend of David’s, in 2024 as illicit.
Only one witness knew what the Performing Arts Office directed by David Sánchez was
Yesterday the testimonies began with several key witnesses. The directors of the two conservatories Sánchez coordinated took the stand. Evaristo Valentí and Rosario Mayoral ran the higher conservatory and Yolanda Sánchez directed the professional conservatory. During the investigation, emails from these witnesses were seized that would support the idea that the coordinator position was created specifically for Sánchez.
On May 19, Valentí wrote an email to Yolanda Sánchez titled “big brother.” Also, “from Yolanda’s statement in the investigation it is deduced that Evaristo told her that afternoon that the position was for David Sánchez,” according to the case file.
But far from confessing knowledge of the favoritism, Evaristo and Yolanda declared that they did not know who was going to be the owner of that position. They acknowledged that, although Sánchez was sometimes talked about in the conservatory hallways, “they were rumors.”
Mayoral, who replaced Valentí as director of the higher conservatory in 2020, also gave a hand to the Prime Minister’s brother. The accusations doubt that David Sánchez performed effective work. They recount that he chained a leave of absence and paternity leave and that during the coronavirus pandemic he opted, like the rest of the staff, for telework. They add that he only conducted the orchestra on five occasions during his time at the Provincial Council between 2017 and 2025 and that he relegated coordination tasks to a few scarce meetings.
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Mayoral contradicted those accusations. She stated that meetings with David Sánchez were “usual” and that he conducted five performances, which is “a lot of work.” Valentí supported that version. He stated that he met with Sánchez daily and that he had an office “they set up for him in the library.”
What these three witnesses did not deny is that they always considered that the coordinator position was “unnecessary.” In those emails seized during the investigation, they called it “nonsense” and emphasized that what was needed “was a piano teacher.” Yesterday they insisted that they would have “preferred that teachers or a community manager be hired.”
There was a fourth witness whose statement also went in favor of David Sánchez. This is Nerses Avakimyam Gasparov, a violinist with an excellent resume who also aspired to the coordinator position. In 2017 he lost the position, but now works for the Badajoz Provincial Council. Gasparov declared that he did not detect irregularities in the hiring process of the Prime Minister’s brother and that he never heard that “that position was pre-assigned to Sánchez.”
The accused had another piece of good news yesterday, as the court annulled by prescription one of the minor crimes attributed to him consisting of accepting an illegal appointment.
The second phase of this story is different: the change to director of the Performing Arts Office. Only one witness knew what that office was and what its tasks consisted of. Furthermore, that modification meant that Sánchez’s incompatibility to perform functions different from that position was eliminated. Several technicians from the Badajoz Provincial Council declared that incompatibility cannot be removed “because it is a legal imperative.” Now the accusations will try to find out if Sánchez had an open office at that time, despite the incompatibility being mandatory.
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