Spanish PM's brother sentenced to 9-year disqualification for prevarication in public job creation

The Verdict

A three-judge panel of the Audiencia Provincial de Badajoz convicted David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, brother of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, as a necessary cooperator in a crime of administrative prevarication. The sentence, issued on 14 July 2026, imposes a nine-year special disqualification from public employment or office and from passive suffrage. The court found that a post of Coordinator of Activities of the Conservatories was created urgently and without real content, then later renamed as head of the Performing Arts Office, with the sole aim of benefitting the defendant. The ruling states the position was set up with high-level management pay and conditions, granting it to García Sánchez while breaching principles of merit and capacity and using opaque, irregular administrative procedures.

Miguel Ángel Gallardo, former secretary general of the PSOE of Extremadura and ex-president of the Badajoz Provincial Council, was convicted on two counts of prevarication and handed two nine-year disqualifications, totalling an 18-year ban from public office. The judges described a preconceived plan executed by 11 defendants under the unity of action, orchestrated by the highest levels of the Diputación. The panel explicitly refused to convict for influence trafficking, arguing that nepotism, however damaging to democratic health, is not automatically a crime unless it fits specific criminal types.

Political reaction

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo celebrated the outcome on social media, writing:

Que nadie esté por encima de la ley, sea familia de quien sea, habla bien de nuestro Estado de Derecho y debería reconfortar a todos los españoles.

PP Congressional spokesperson Ester Muñoz called it "another historic day for Spanish democracy" and argued the conviction would topple any government elsewhere. She directly linked the case to two prior sentences: the first-ever conviction of Spain's Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, and the 24-year prison term handed to former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos. Muñoz noted that Pedro Sánchez was in Paris attending France's Bastille Day parade, adding: "I ask myself, what a coincidence that a post was created and it just fell to his brother."

Vox president Santiago Abascal posted on X that the conviction joins over 100 people indicted around Sánchez, while denouncing alleged PSOE payments to a media outlet to target judges and prosecutors.

PSOE pushes back

The socialist response was swift. Deputy Prime Minister and PSOE Andalusia candidate María Jesús Montero, speaking at the Andalusian parliament, insisted the verdict should have been an immediate acquittal. "It does not correspond to the trial, nor to the 'non-evidence' that was presented to show any kind of irregularity in the hiring," she told reporters, adding she had not yet read the full ruling. Transport Minister Óscar Puente used his X account to frame the sentence as part of a broader effort to bring down the government by straining institutions when electoral defeat was impossible.

This era will be studied in the history books as one in which the seams of our most essential institutions were stretched with the sole aim of toppling a government because they could not do it at the ballot box.

Nepotism without a trafficking conviction

The written ruling, as reported by ABC, draws a sharp legal line. The magistrates – Emilio Serrano (rapporteur), María Dolores Fernández Gallardo, and José Antonio Patrocinio Polo (president) – state that while nepotism damages democratic health, fosters corruption and inequality, and breaches the constitutional duty to serve the public interest objectively, it is not per se a crime. They note that only when the facts fit into a specific criminal definition, such as prevarication, does a conviction follow. This reasoning excluded a conviction for tráfico de influencias (influence trafficking), even though the judges detailed multiple indicators that the post was created precisely for David Sánchez.