After listening to Vox deputy Ana Cuartero insist on the existence of a “plot” and “strategy hatched by Moncloa” to “nurture the businesses” of Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the former co-director — along with Gómez — from the Chair of Competitive Social Transformation of the Complutense University, José Manuel Ruano, allowed himself a reflection this Wednesday, in the research commission of the Assembly of Madrid. “One of the big problems we have in liberal democracies is political disaffection and you contribute to generating it.” […] “These types of stories are absurd,” he complained, while a few kilometers away Gómez herself returned to appear in court.
By then, Ruano had been explaining for half an hour what had already been evident in the three previous sessions of the investigative commission in which PP and Vox try to gather evidence of favorable treatment for Gómez: that the regulations allowed her to be named co-director due to her previous experience. , even if he did not have a university degree or permanent link with the entity. It was enough that he did have it and with the previous experience of Gómez, who had been working with the Complutense since the 2012-2013 academic year.
The PP was not daunted by Ruano’s sociological reflection; On the contrary, representative Mercedes Zarzalejo questioned his independence of judgment with the argument that if two events occur in the same period perhaps they are related: while Ruano was co-director of the chair he also had to chair the commission that favorably judged the merits of Pablo Iglesias when, after leaving the Government, he applied for an associate professor position at Complutense itself. Ruano explained that if he participated in that process it was because he had been drawn by lot, and that he had not spoken about it with Gómez.
Between these inferences and suspicions of Vox and PP about temporal coincidences, the work of the commission is being carried out, which still has not found evidence of charges against Gómez, the Government or the university administration. Both Ruano and Blanca de Juan, coordinator of the master’s degree in public and private fundraising in non-profit organizations, denied pressure, instructions or favors from Moncloa.
“You have a lot of imagination. The day to day [de la cátedra] It was much less exciting,” said Juan, the first to intervene, ironically, who explained that he met Gómez as a student on the master’s degree and that he later began to coordinate it at her request. The rivers of ink published and the political and judicial accusations bother him. “Many people, teachers and students are being involved in discredit because the director of the chair is married to the President of the Government,” he criticized. De Juan did not want to talk specifically about the website for SMEs that the chair developed – the judge is investigating an alleged misappropriation – because it was judicialized, but he denied irregularities in this regard, as did Ruano.
The photographs with the rector
Ruano agreed with Gómez in his statement before the judge that the main promoter of the chair was the rector of the Complutense himself, Joaquín Goyache, who until news about the matter began to appear in the media “did not miss the opportunity to take photographs.” with the president’s wife. He also accused him of a “maneuver of intimidation” for opening a disciplinary file against him.
Furthermore, he alleged that if the vice-rector for Planning, Coordination and Institutional Relations, José María Coello of Portugal, did not accept to receive the chair’s activity report in the last mixed monitoring commission, on July 2, it was not because of a matter of formal neatness, but so that the rector could justify before the judge three days later that it was the chair itself that did not provide enough information, as the university stated in a report sent to the court on day 1. “I think the rector is forced to kick her out of the university, I don’t know for what reason or by whom,” he said.
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