Former PSOE negotiator Santos Cerdán's memoir threatens Sánchez: 'I know the backroom'

Santos Cerdán, former Organization Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), releases his self-published memoir 'La Caída: poder, relato y destrucción en la era del juicio político' on June 30, 2026, exactly one year after he was jailed in the sprawling Koldo corruption case. The book mixes a vivid prison diary with a narrative of victimisation, painting Cerdán as the indispensable 'architect of impossible majorities' who was discarded once he became inconvenient.

The warning to Sánchez

In the book's opening pages, Cerdán addresses Pedro Sánchez directly:

“I know the backroom, the decisions that are not explained.”

He calls the remark "a warning," implying he possesses damaging information about the Prime Minister. Cerdán reasserts his claim to have been the real force behind the 2018 no-confidence motion that brought Sánchez to power and the subsequent deals with PNV, EH Bildu and Junts, including the investiture pact that required a photographed meeting with Carles Puigdemont in Brussels.

“In politics, when you bother enough, you stop being useful. You become a problem and problems are not managed, they are eliminated.”

First night in prison

The memoir recounts the day of Cerdán's arrest, June 30, 2025, when he appeared before the Supreme Court expecting to influence events and instead was sent directly to Soto del Real prison. He spent 142 days there before being released on November 19, 2025. Cerdán describes the moment the cell door closed:

“The metallic noise is not just a sound: it is a frontier.”

The first night, he writes,

“is not an experience. It's a slap.”

He details the slow loss of temporal sense, the good reception from inmates in module 13, the €2.20 cost of phone calls to his wife, and the solitary cell he never shared.

Abandonment and legal battles

Cerdán says Sánchez did not ask for his resignation; it was his own decision after the UCO report was made public on June 12, 2025. Yet he writes of rapid isolation:

“In a matter of hours I was left without legal cover, political support, resources. Abandoned and beaten.”

He is currently under investigation in the Koldo case, where a Guardia Civil report alleges he managed at least €620,000 in kickbacks from public-works contracts, and in the separate Leire Díez case concerning obstruction of judicial investigations. The book omits any mention of Leire Díez or of Koldo García, and barely references José Luis Ábalos, who was convicted to 24 years in the same affair. Instead, Cerdán defends his innocence, denounces "parallel trials" by the media, and calls on readers to reflect on the presumption of innocence.