From corruption to jewellery, Zapatero appears on TV and denies the allegations

Madrid. Zapatero denies everything. On Thursday, the former Spanish Prime Minister gave an interview on the first channel of state television. It was his first public appearance since his name was added to the list of suspects in the investigation into the financial bailout of the airline Plus Ultra, and two days after his friend and business partner, Julito Martínez, had identified him as the mastermind behind a corrupt scheme in which Zapatero and his two daughters, Alba and Laura, allegedly received substantial sums of money in exchange for favours that the former Socialist Prime Minister is said to still be able to secure thanks to his excellent relations with the Sánchez government and with other governments around the world, Venezuela in particular. Zapatero’s responses have remained the same: it is all false.

So, for now, those expecting a change in strategy are left disappointed – perhaps prompted by the fact that his daughters are deeply embroiled in this affair; both are under investigation, having received one million euros over a few years without having done almost anything, says Julito Martínez. They have worked and will answer to the judge, says their father. Journalist Javier Ruiz, widely viewed as closely aligned with the government and the Spanish Socialist Party (all state television in Spain is considered a Socialist stronghold), manages to leave his interviewee speechless when he asks whether he used his daughters as figureheads. “What an incredible question!” he exclaims. As for himself, Zapatero maintains that he worked as a consultant for Martínez’s companies and not as a fixer collecting bribes, but he defers any explanation to the appropriate judicial forum. He denies having spoken to members of the government, which, during the pandemic, granted a 53 million loan to Plus Ultra, an obscure airline that presented itself as a Spanish company but was in fact controlled by Venezuelan shareholders with close ties to Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

‘How, then, do you explain the accusations made by your old friend Julito?’ asks the journalist. ‘I won’t comment on other people’s defence strategies,’ replies the former prime minister. ‘How do you explain that those directly involved knew about the loan approval two weeks in advance?’ ‘I didn’t tell them.’ And what about the little helping hand from Social Security? In 2020, he granted a deferral on the payment of debts that the airline had been accumulating since 2017, ensuring that it met the eligibility criteria to receive the state loan intended for companies knocked out by Covid. All this, coincidentally, following a meeting between the then Minister Escrivá and… Zapatero. “I didn’t do anything,” he repeats. On the sidelines of this investigation, during a search of his office, investigators found the famous jewellery in a safe, which a team of experts valued at 1.3 million euros. It’s impossible not to ask him for clarification, but it’s also pointless, because the answer is always the same: it was a gesture of courtesy that requires prudence and discretion, whilst assuring us that he will respond. As for the offence of tax evasion, that jewellery was there at home and no one had ever really considered its monetary value. However, the journalist insists, as Prime Minister he drafted and had approved a code of ethics which urged people not to accept gifts. Perhaps Zapatero has breached the ‘Zapatero Code’? ‘That’s debatable,’ he replies.

What remains is the personal side of the story, and here the journalist leaves himself open to malicious comments. ‘How are you?’ he asks. Zapatero says he is worried and, with a touch of literary name-dropping, even raises the spectre of a novel of his own: ‘Everything that happens to us’ (as J. L. Borges is said to have remarked) ‘is the raw material of our work’. He then seizes the opportunity to hit back at those who have attacked him in recent months, starting with the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The day before, the leader of the People’s Party had claimed that it was the Sánchez government’s fault that Zapatero had been able to commit a crime. This is a violation of the presumption of innocence, and the journalist in the studio – of all the incendiary statements available to embarrass the interviewee – decides to put him at ease by airing Feijóo’s rather ill-chosen remark. There was also a dig at Felipe González, the former Socialist leader who has become the fiercest critic of today’s Spanish Socialists. González says of Zapatero what Zapatero says of himself, namely that he would be incapable of setting up an offshore company. He ought to be grateful, but instead comes the dig: “He’ll know a thing or two about that.”