PSOE bankrolled covert operation to derail investigations into Sánchez's inner circle, Guardia Civil finds

Sánchez's letter triggers the operation

Just 16 hours after Pedro Sánchez published his "Letter to the Citizenry" on 24 April 2024, retreating to Moncloa and questioning whether he should remain in office, the PSOE activated Leire Díez and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset. The letter came after Sánchez learned his wife, Begoña Gómez, had become an official suspect. At 20:30 that evening, government and party leaders gathered at the presidential complex, including then-deputy prime minister María Jesús Montero, ministers Óscar Puente, Óscar López and Félix Bolaños, and organizational secretary Santos Cerdán. At 11:26 the next morning, the PSOE blocked an Iberia flight from Madrid to Bilbao for Díez, charged to party funds.

“I urgently need to answer the question of whether it is worth it, despite the mud into which the right and the far right are trying to turn politics. Whether I should continue at the head of government or give up this high honour. (...) I have never been attached to the post. I am attached to duty, to political commitment and to public service.”

The funding trail and Cerdán's role

The PSOE paid for nine plane or train tickets for Leire Díez across six trips between 26 April and 26 August 2024, according to invoices handed to the Central Operative Unit (UCO). One journey, the last on record, took her from Santander to Madrid on 26 August 2024 to meet former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, as intercepted messages show she told Villarejo's lawyer: "Tell Pepe at 12. They've delayed my flight to 10."

Party documents state that Cerdán "did not require any authorisation for the contracting of transport and accommodation" and that he "verbally ordered that any trip requested by [Díez] should be deemed authorised." When a Ferraz employee questioned the irregular booking, the response was: "It's a direct order from the organisational secretary."

The May 2025 pressure on the Guardia Civil

On 11 May 2025, EL MUNDO began publishing WhatsApp messages between Sánchez and former minister José Luis Ábalos. That same morning, Guardia Civil director general Mercedes González contacted Leire Díez by WhatsApp. Two hours later, the force's deputy director of operations, Manuel Llamas, summoned the head of security to a café at the Guardia Civil headquarters and proposed an internal investigation into the UCO to find the presumed leaker. Llamas later acknowledged he had received "a lot of political pressure" to go after the unit.

“Any trip requested by [Díez] should be deemed authorised.”

PSOE distances itself, calls it 'individual behaviour'

At a press conference on 15 June 2026, new organizational secretary Rebeca Torró said the party has no contractual relationship with Díez and framed the payments as a decision taken alone by Santos Cerdán. She argued that no other member of the executive knew of the activities, because "nobody would have tolerated an illegality." Torró did not rule out legal action against Cerdán and Díez but said the party would wait for the investigation to advance.

“Nobody knew. If they had, nobody on the executive would have tolerated an illegality.”

While Torró spoke, Begoña Gómez was appearing before a judge and former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was also due to testify as an indicted party. Sánchez limited his public communication to a social media post about the national football team.