The national leadership of the PP has avoided this Monday making an express defense of the former president of the Government Mariano Rajoy and the former general secretary of the PP María Dolores de Cospedal, who will testify as witnesses in the trial of the Kitchen case that began today in the National Court and to whom the former treasurer of the PP Luis Bárcenas has pointed out in a veiled manner. At the press conference after the PP steering committee, the PP deputy secretary of the Treasury, Juan Bravo, was asked if he trusts the innocence of Rajoy and Cospedal. His response has been limited to a request to “let justice work” and a desire for “everyone to assume their responsibilities.” “I am not a judge to say who is responsible and who is guilty,” Bravo added. Génova has at the same time tried to distance itself from the case, which involves the Interior leadership of Rajoy’s Government until 2016, arguing that “the PP of 2026 is neither Kitchen nor Gürtel.”
Both Rajoy and Cospedal will testify as witnesses in the trial that began this Monday at the National Court and that will try to clear up the mystery of who ordered the spying on Bárcenas, the objective of the parapolice plot that sought to steal evidence that could compromise the then President of the Government. The former treasurer of the PP has reappeared in the run-up to the trial in an interview in The World in which he pointed out the previous leadership of the PP. Bárcenas maintains in that interview that an operation like the one investigating the Kitchen case “it is impossible for it to be carried out without the knowledge of the highest levels of the party.” Questioned about those words from Bárcenas, the popular deputy secretary stressed that Génova “respects justice” and “let justice be the one to say who is responsible.”
“The PP’s position is very clear,” Juan Bravo emphasized. “Let justice act with full independence and let the guilty pay. We condemn without nuance any cause of corruption. We do not point fingers at justice. The PP of 2026 is not Kitchen or Gürtel, nor is the PSOE Filesa. Ábalos and Cerdán is Pedro Sánchez’s entourage. We respect justice. Feijóo does not have anyone on his team involved in cases of corruption, nor was any of his advisors in the Xunta involved in corruption. That is the difference between Feijóo and Sánchez”, he added.
Feijóo’s leadership is trying to distance itself from the trial in which prominent former party leaders will parade to testify as witnesses, including two current senior PP officials. In addition to Rajoy, Cospedal and former vice president Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the interrogation of Juan Ignacio Zoido, who succeeded Fernández Díaz as Minister of the Interior, as well as Javier Arenas, who served as deputy secretary general of Autonomous Policy, is scheduled. Zoido is now a PP MEP and Arenas is a senator and member of Feijóo’s steering committee. The party’s only disciplinary measure was taken against former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, accused in the case, who was suspended from militancy in 2021. He continues in that condition, in a file that has not been closed and that has not yet definitively expelled him from the party.
Feijóo’s PP prefers to focus on another trial that starts this week, the one investigating the former socialist minister José Luis Ábalos and his advisor Koldo García, which begins this Tuesday in the Supreme Court. “Today the Spaniards return to work, and Sánchez’s entourage returns to the courts and investigation commissions,” Bravo remarked. The popular deputy secretary has argued that the corruption of Ábalos and Koldo has been experienced “live” and has emphasized that “the Sánchez clan has to respond to 400 years in prison.” The popular ones focus on the closeness of Ábalos with the President of the Government, whose right-hand man in the Executive and in the party, and go further by accusing Pedro Sánchez of being “his friend and very possibly his cover-up.”
