Spain's National Court Begins Trial Over Illegal Spying on Luis Bárcenas

Spain's National Court opened the trial for Operation Kitchen on Monday, April 6, 2026, a case centered on an alleged illegal espionage operation run by senior officials of the Interior Ministry under former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government against Luis Bárcenas, the former treasurer of the Partido Popular. The Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office is seeking a combined total of decades in prison for a group of former high-ranking officials, with the heaviest individual request being 19 years for former police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. The alleged operation was designed to seize documents held by Bárcenas that could have implicated the PP and its leadership in the Gürtel corruption case. On the eve of the trial's opening, Bárcenas submitted a new document to the court's Fourth Section alleging that the operation against him extended inside the walls of Soto del Real prison, where he was held in pre-trial detention.

Bárcenas details strip searches and handcuff injuries in prison In his submission, Bárcenas provided the court with a series of formal complaints he filed over nearly two years with the management of Soto del Real prison, describing what he characterized as a sustained campaign of intimidation carried out while the government was simultaneously running an illegal intelligence operation against him on the outside. He described being subjected to a full strip search on the pretext of allegedly introducing prohibited objects, a charge he said was never proven. As early as January 2014, he filed a formal complaint citing injuries to his wrists caused by excessively tightened handcuffs. He also reported that ordinary communications were denied to him and that he was sanctioned for refusing to provide a phone number he had used during authorized calls. In a handwritten note delivered to the director of Soto del Real, Bárcenas stated his refusal to be transferred to a medical appointment under what he described as humiliating and physically harmful conditions imposed by members of the security forces guarding him. He also alleged that on one occasion he suffered a sudden and serious allergic reaction requiring treatment outside the prison, which he associated with a deliberate poisoning attempt, according to reporting by El Mundo. Bárcenas is appearing in the trial as a private prosecution party, and his lawyers argue that the mistreatment inside the prison was an extension of the broader Kitchen operation orchestrated by the Rajoy executive.

Prosecutors seek 15 years for former Interior Minister Fernández Díaz The Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office has requested 15 years in prison for former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz on charges of concealment, embezzlement, and crimes against privacy. The same 15-year sentence is sought for Francisco Martínez, who served as Secretary of State for Security, and for Eugenio Pino, who held the post of Operational Deputy Director of the Police. Prosecutors allege that in the first half of 2013, the leadership of the Interior Ministry devised an illegal police intelligence operation aimed at obtaining documents and digital evidence that could prove incriminating for the PP and its senior leaders in proceedings before the National Court's Central Court of Instruction number 5, the court handling the Gürtel case. Former commissioner Andrés Manuel Gómez Gordo also faces a request of 15 years, while Sergio Ríos Esgueva, who served as Bárcenas's driver and is described as a key figure in the operation's execution, faces a requested sentence of 12 years and 5 months. Marcelino Martín Blas faces a requested sentence of two and a half years. A seventh defendant, Enrique García Castaño, will not stand trial after suffering a stroke, according to El Periódico.

19 (years) — prison term sought for former commissioner Villarejo

Gürtel case shadow looms over PP's former leadership The prosecution's indictment places the origin of the Kitchen operation squarely within the political pressures generated by the Gürtel corruption investigation, which threatened to expose financial irregularities at the highest levels of the PP. According to prosecutors, the goal of the illegal parapolice operation was to strip Bárcenas of documentation he possessed that could damage the party and its top leaders in the ongoing judicial proceedings. The approach to Bárcenas's driver, Ríos Esgueva, was made possible through Gómez Gordo, described as a police officer of the utmost confidence of former PP Secretary General María Dolores de Cospedal, who appointed him Director General of Documentation and Analysis of the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha when she presided over it. Cospedal and her then-husband, businessman Ignacio López del Hierro, were excluded from the proceedings by decision of Judge Manuel García-Castellón, a ruling endorsed by the National Court's Criminal Chamber, which declined to reopen the case to indict them despite requests from all private prosecution parties after new audio recordings involving Villarejo emerged. Judge Antonio Piña, García-Castellón's successor at Central Court of Instruction number 6, also declined to indict Cospedal.

The Gürtel case is a long-running Spanish corruption investigation that uncovered a network of illicit financing linked to the Partido Popular, involving kickbacks paid to party officials in exchange for public contracts over several decades. Luis Bárcenas served as the PP's manager between 1990 and 2008 and later as its treasurer until 2009, before being implicated in the Gürtel case in 2009. Operation Kitchen is the seventh separate strand of the broader Tándem operation, a wider investigation led by the Anticorruption Prosecutor's Office that also centers on former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, who was held in pretrial detention from November 2017 until March 2021.