Judge José Luis Calama took a step this Thursday that many had been expecting, albeit not so quickly. Just one day after José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero left the National Court without precautionary measures—though without managing to dispel the evidence against him—the judge in the Plus Ultra case expanded the investigation.
Alba and Laura Rodríguez Espinosa, daughters of the former president, and Gertrudis Alcázar, his secretary for decades, now become suspects.
The decision didn’t come out of nowhere. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office had requested on Tuesday that the judge take statements from the three women. In his ruling, Calama refers to the evidence gathered on May 18, when he authorized the search of Whathefav, the communications company of which Alba and Laura are listed as joint administrators.
According to the magistrate, that company would have played an instrumental role within the investigated network, which places its legal representatives in the circle indicated by the case.
The judge himself clarifies that there is still no solid evidence against the Rodríguez sisters. But he emphasizes that there is sufficient reasonable suspicion of criminal activity to warrant not summoning them as mere witnesses—a status that would compel them to testify under penalty of perjury. Summoning them as suspects, he explains, protects their right not to testify against themselves.
The focus on Gertrudis Alcázar is different. The secretary worked from Zapatero’s office at number 35 Ferraz Street, a few meters from the PSOE headquarters. The judge attributes to her an operational role in the scheme’s document management, coordinating paperwork that, according to the investigation, served to give a formal appearance to payments whose true origin is now of interest to the National Court.
The Plus Ultra case began in 2021, when the PP, Vox and the Manos Limpias union denounced the 53 million euro bailout that the Pedro Sánchez government granted, through SEPI, to a virtually unknown airline, justified at the time by its routes to Latin America.
The case was shelved in 2023 due to a lack of evidence. It was revived in 2024 when France and Switzerland requested judicial cooperation regarding alleged money laundering of Venezuelan funds linked to the rescue operation.
Since then, the case has accumulated increasingly troubling details. A search of Zapatero’s office uncovered a safe containing jewelry that his associates initially valued at between 30,000 and 50,000 euros, until a court-ordered appraisal placed its value at 1.3 million euros. Businessman Julio Martínez Martínez, a personal friend of the former president, appears as the beneficiary of a commission equivalent to one percent of the ransom—approximately 530,000 euros—channeled through a company based in Dubai.
Never before has a former Spanish Prime Minister been formally investigated for corruption and influence peddling. While the PSOE closes ranks around its historical figure, the PP and Vox insist that the case confirms the allegations they filed in 2021. Even Gabriel Rufián, spokesperson for ERC, admitted that he may have been wrong to defend Zapatero out of affection, before knowing the contents of the court order.
What happened this week confirms something that the conservative Hispanic American voter has been pointing out for years: when power is exercised without controls or transparency, it ends up dragging down the family, the collaborators and the entire institutions.
The progressive movement that managed that multi-million euro bailout without convincing explanations is now seeing the daughters and secretary of the man who governed Spain summoned to testify by the courts. The left, which sold the public aid as social generosity, now faces the most uncomfortable question: who really benefited from that money?
Defending the law, the family, and individual responsibility against institutional cronyism is not an ideological choice: it is the only guarantee that taxpayers’ money will not end up funding opaque networks disguised as pandemic solidarity.