The judge Juan Carlos Peinado “He has been pedaling into nothing for six months,” according to the official government version presented last week by its spokesperson, Pilar Alegriaduring the press conference after the Council of Ministers at Moncloa.
However, the judges of the Provincial Court of Madrid approved that the judge continues the investigation, with the exception of the part of public aid to Globalia which had already been dismissed months ago by this court. And above all, the magistrates rejected the request for Begoña Gomezwife of Pedro Sanchezto archive judicial information.
There is no official reaction from Moncloa or the PSOE, but government sources consider this to be a blow to the strategy of Sánchez and his wife and, above all, a political setback major.
On the one hand, because he maintains the affair and leaves in a bad light the conviction expressed with insistence by various members of the Government that the affair was going to be archived. Moncloa had created the expectation of an immediate file and now she must proclaim as a success that a small part of the investigation is limited, which, on the other hand, had already been excluded at the beginning of the procedure.
This forecast, now thwarted by the Provincial Court, appeared in the letter to citizens which led him last April to isolate himself for five days in Moncloa to reflect on his continuity in his mandate.
This means maintaining wear and tear and, moreover, continuing to tarnish Sánchez’s image in the foreign presssomething that worries him a lot. According to the magistrates, this involves investigating “all of the activity carried out by the person indicted in relation to the launch of his professional activity”.
Also, according to these sources, the resolution of the Provincial Court distracts Judge Peinadoon which until now all the lights and all the batteries of the socialists had been concentrated. It is no longer him who “pedals into nothingness”, but there is the support of a higher authority.
In this sense, the Provincial Court’s decision attenuates the expectation that the two complaints filed by Begoña Gómez y Sánchez against the judge, that of the President of the Government, through the Public Prosecutor’s Office. These complaints are awaiting the decision of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid.
It’s not prospective
Some concerned socialists had already privately expressed doubts about the strategy based on using all government resources against the judge, although almost all agree in criticizing Peinado’s actions. For the moment, the ministers have fulfilled the mandate of the Presidency of the Government and have not hesitated to openly attack the magistrate.
In Moncloa, they hoped that the resolution of the Provincial Court would at least include reproaches against Peinado from which they could benefit. The only one that appears as such is the reference to a sentence from one of his writings on the investigation into all the events since Sánchez was president, but the magistrates They expressly reject that it is a prospective investigationas Moncloa assures and as members of the government repeat.
This also dismantles another argument by Sánchez and his team about the existence of two reports from the Civil Guard that, supposedly, they would dismantle Peinado’s investigation because they would confirm that there are no crimes.
Moncloa acknowledges that the investigation began with information about the subsidies granted to Globalia and its relations with Begoña Gómez, and ended up being an investigation into the software allegedly taken from university Complete. According to the government, this would show that the investigation is being diluted because it has been necessary to focus on different facts each time.
However, the judges of the Provincial Court explain that the investigation “is still a living procedure, which cannot be anchored to the facts initially reported as having been committed.”
And the references in the resolution to the alleged favorable treatment of businessman Carlos Barrabés are worrying. For example, when we emphasize that “the striking quantitative and qualitative variation experienced by the relationship between the companies of the Barrabés group and the Public Administration in the temporal proximity of obtaining the Chair is truly significant”. [de la Complutense] and take off from the masters”.
