Zapatero appears before National Court as first ex-president charged in democracy

The former president will testify this Wednesday and Thursday over the Plus Ultra bailout and the jewels found in his Ferraz office, worth over €1 million. For José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, today marks a watershed moment. The former prime minister appears before Judge Calama as a person under investigation, becoming the first Spanish head of government to stand accused in a corruption case since the transition to democracy. The hearing, which begins today at 09:00 and will run until tomorrow, seeks to shed light on two fronts at once. On the one hand, the €53 million state bailout of the airline 'Plus Ultra'. On the other, the discovery of luxury jewellery during the search of his office in Ferraz, which has forced the judge to open a separate file because of their value, preliminarily assessed at €1.3 million and whose origin, the case file notes, has not been justified. The court order underpinning the case also refers to the company owned by the former prime minister's daughters, What The Fav, which received up to €2 million for “consultancy” and layout work that may have been used to disguise the payment of alleged kickbacks. The investigating judge, who describes Zapatero as the leader of an “organised scheme”, will today hear the former prime minister's explanations behind closed doors. A ‘horribilis’ week for the government Zapatero is not just a former prime minister sitting before a judge; for years he has been one of the most important assets within the Socialist Party. His appearances at rallies and campaign closings, and his good relationship with Pedro Sánchez since he took office at the Moncloa Palace in 2018, mean that this case has been one of the hardest blows for the PSOE and the government itself. Although the defence of the former prime minister, led by Víctor Moreno Catena, has already tried to limit the scope of the questioning by asking for the jewellery to be left out of the first session, the judge refused, arguing that there is no “real impairment of his right to a defence”.