After a few delirious days of the corruption accusations that began with the Koldo case, in which they raised the pressure on ex-minister Ábalos and banged on the door of the Moncloa palace seeking Pedro Sánchez's wife, the Socialists (PSOE) has now reacted through a complaint by the Madrid provincial prosecutors against Alberto González Amador, partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso since 2021, for alleged tax fraud and document forgery. The two cases are not comparable, at least for now, either in economic terms or with regard to the media and judicial repercussions they might have. But, once the draft amnesty law was approved in the Congress of Deputies' justice committee, the PSOE seem determined not to give up the legislature for dead and remain trapped under the corruption of two cases that run in parallel: the misuse of public funds, including those of the European Commission, in the purchase of masks for Covid-19 and the bailout of the Air Europa airline.
Since it is not the first time that the PSOE and the opposition People's Party (PP) have fired corruption accusations at each other, it is worth having some background on what has happened in these situations. There has always been a similar pattern of behaviour. The Socialist electorate has punished its party more when it has been caught in the mire of corruption than the PP voters have when the reverse applies and the excrement has piled up in conservative party offices. We will see what happens this time, since it is not the first time that Díaz Ayuso or one of her relatives have been under the magnifying glass of investigation and have ended up walking away untarnished by the episode. Now, the tax agency has detected anomalies in the declarations of the Ayuso couple for the years 2020 and 2021 which indicate that they defrauded more than 350,000 euros in those two years through a series of false invoices and shell companies. With a speed as unusual as it is commendable, the AEAT reported it to the prosecutor's office and the latter, with a dedication to duty that is also commendable, presented a "denunciation" and not a complaint, which is what is done in 100% of these cases. I don't know, but if the prosecutors see it as a crime, then it's always a complaint.
It is predicted that in the days ahead we will have new episodes featuring this González Amador gentleman and it will be then when we will be able to work out if, beyond defending itself, the PSOE is truly making accusations of mass destruction, or, on the contrary, is shooting blanks. On the other hand, I also don't think that this Díaz Ayuso issue is a major concern for Alberto Núñez Feijóo, since a couple of painful jabs to an internal party rival are so not bad either, the Galician must be thinking. In fact, what brought Feijóo to the PP's Spanish headquarters in the first place were the accusations made by Pablo Casado against Ayuso in 2022 for hiring her brother, a battle which ended with the then-president of the People's Party leaving office. Ayuso got off scot-free, once the courts had shelved all the accusations. Now, Ayuso has responded to the accusations levelled at her partner by asserting that she is undergoing political persecution.
No matter how much she is offended, Ayuso can sleep much more peacefully, as long as she is not a nuisance to the "deep state" to which she belongs
What would she know about suffering persecution, to be able to talk about it with a minimum of coherency? No matter how much she is offended, the Madrid president knows that, in the end, there is a network of interests that will prop her up, since the judiciary does not always dish out justice in the same way. To put it another way, she can sleep much more peacefully, at least, for as long as she is not a nuisance to the "deep state" to which she belongs. Because the heavy artillery in Madrid is not set up to assault Ayuso but rather Sánchez, as the PSOE, the PP and the Moncloa all know very well. The latest move in the Socialist corruption plot is centred on the key commission agent of the Koldo case, Víctor de Aldana, who has hired a top Madrid lawyer with the intention, presumably, of blowing the whistle and thus making a deal with the anticorruption prosecutors which would see his hypothetical sentence reduced.
A good moment for the pro-independence parties to use their votes in Madrid to reverse the absolute scandal of the state's investments in Catalonia. The territorialized income and expenditure data for 2021, which the Spanish finance ministry has published this Tuesday - something it has not done since 2014 - should make everyone blush. It can be clearly seen that the state's spending is much higher in Madrid than in Catalonia. Specifically, public companies, which account for a large part of this investment through enterprises such as Adif, Renfe, Enaire and Puertos del Estado, among others, invested 68% more in Madrid. The Spanish government's fraud is obvious, but also at fault are the vigilance and the lack of public complaint on the Catalan side. State-owned companies invested 4,423 million euros in 2021, of which 866 (19.6%) went to Madrid and 515.2 million (11.6%) went to Catalonia, 350 million less than the Madrid community received. In fact, Andalusia received almost as much investment as Catalonia: 489 million.
Until Catalonia manages to get out of this vicious circle, in which it always gets taken for a ride, its political position will be laughable no matter how much it affects governments or parliamentary majorities.