"Whoever falls, who pays," warned the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, forcefully yesterday, following the murky scandal of alleged corruption in the Koldo case that has just exploded in his hands at a particularly delicate moment -and uncertain- of his new mandate. There are nerves.
Sánchez sent a warning, prepared for the occasion, and all eyes seemed to be directed at the absent figure of the former Minister of Transport and ex-Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, many other times present at the same Sala de Ferraz where the meeting of the Socialist International (IS), the organization that brings together social democratic and labor parties from all over the world and which is also chaired by Sánchez, was held yesterday.
In the midst of a political storm due to the plot in which Koldo García, the former personal assistant of ex-minister Ábalos, is being investigated, whom the leadership of the PSOE is indirectly pressuring - and so far unsuccessfully - to resign from his act of deputy in Congress, Sánchez took advantage of his speech before the plenary session of the IS to once again raise the flag of commitment in the fight against corruption.
And he defended the "exemplary" of his political project and the government that he managed to form in 2018, precisely to put an end to the "corruption" of the previous executive of Mariano Rajoy, and that he revalidated after the general elections of 2023 against the "reactionary coalition" of the Popular Party and the extreme right of Vox.
Sánchez emphasized that his government "was born from the need to put an end to the corruption of the previous administration of the PP government", after the ruling in the Gürtel case. "And he has made his exemplarity his flag", he stressed, to distinguish himself from the Koldo case. "Absolute, total exemplarity, which does not understand colors", he defended.
"I want to reaffirm that the fight against corruption must be relentless, no matter where it comes from and who falls," he stressed, referring to the Koldo case that is now plaguing the PSOE, and also as indirect pressure on the former minister Ábalos, who is reluctant to give up his seat in Congress, since he is not involved in the judicial investigation or in the indictment of the Anticorruption Prosecutor.
"In the face of those who obstructed the action of justice to hinder investigations that affected them, as happened during the administration of the Popular Party, today there is absolute collaboration with justice to get to the end", defended Sánchez.
"And in the face of those who shielded corruption, and expelled those who denounced it, today there is absolute transparency, and who pays," he stressed.
"This is how it has been for the last six years, and this is how it will continue to be for these four years", he warned, referring to his current mandate. "Guaranteeing exemplarity has been and continues to be the hallmark of the progressive coalition Government", he concluded.
Sánchez thus wanted to again draw a contrast between what he says is a fulminant reaction against cases of corruption that can affect the PSOE and its Government, and the practices he attributes to the PP.
That is why his covert reference to the case of the brother of the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who was involved - as is now the case in the Koldo case - in an alleged plot to buy and sell masks during the pandemic, with the collection of abundant fraudulent commissions. A case that the PSOE remembers that put an end to the leadership of Pablo Casado in the PP, in 2022, to ask for explanations from Ayuso.
Sánchez also alluded with his words to the Gürtel case that ended up toppling Rajoy's government in 2018. "We don't destroy evidence with hammer blows," replied Minister Félix Bolaños on Thursday, referring to the destruction of computers from PP ex-treasurer Luis Bárcenas.
