“In the Government they said that time would play in their favor, that people would turn the page and forget the cases, but in reality it works against them. Now they have to see if there is a photograph of Begoña Gómez sitting on a bench, they have to see the PSOE managers in the National Court, they still have more of Ábalos, they have to see Julio Martínez, Leire, Zapatero, Gertrudis… The worst is yet to come, they have everything left!” This is the diagnosis made by sources consulted at the top of the PP after the conviction of David Sánchez, brother of the Prime Minister, to nine years of disqualification for administrative prevarication.
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For the PP, the unanimous conviction by the Provincial Court of Badajoz (appealable first to the Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura, and then to the Supreme Court) marks a new “historic” milestone, after that of the Attorney General and José Luis Ábalos, former number two of Pedro Sánchez.
For the populares, the toughest months of the legislature are undoubtedly ahead for the PSOE. “From now on, there won’t be a week without having to look at a court. The most complex is still ahead. It will be a long ordeal during the remaining 12 months of the term,” they add in Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s team.
The PP leader wanted to recall Sánchez’s words yesterday, when he said that “the truth will end up prevailing.” “Well, here is” that truth, he tweeted. “That no one is above the law, no matter whose family they belong to, speaks well of our Rule of Law and should comfort all Spaniards,” he added.
In statements to the media in the corridors of Congress, the PP spokesperson in the Lower House, Ester Muñoz, assured that “we are facing another historic day for Spanish democracy.” “There have been many, today is one more. For the first time in democracy, a Spanish Prime Minister has his brother convicted,” she emphasized, “for giving him and plugging him into a position in Badajoz.”
“This would bring down any government in any country,” the PP spokesperson concluded. Muñoz, who admitted to being “astonished” by the statements of those who, from the PSOE, see lawfare without having read the ruling, believes that “it is proven that Mr. David Sánchez knew he was going to be given a position and simulated legality in the contest for that position.” “He knew he was not going to work, that he was being paid for not going to work, and he knew and was aware that the position was later modified to meet the requirements. All of this he knew, it is proven in the sentence,” she judged.
“Listen, what a coincidence that out of all the citizens in Badajoz, the position fell to Pedro Sánchez’s brother. What a coincidence,” Muñoz continued, before once again calling for the president’s resignation.
“What would be happening to any European prime minister if today their brother were being convicted? What would happen to Macron if today the French courts were convicting his brother for prevarication?” she rhetorically asked.
For his part, for Santiago Abascal, the conviction of Sánchez’s brother is one more argument in favor of his thesis that the Government “is a mafia.” “And it governs because they have left us alone and demonized, for years, those of us who denounced it from the beginning,” he wrote on his social networks, also alluding to other judicial cases around the Executive.
Along the same lines, for Vox deputy José María Figaredo the conviction of David Sánchez “shows that these guys are crooks, real thieves.” “They have placed their entire family to plug them in to obtain money through public funds.”
