As in the scalextrics at the fair booths, a convoy from the ultra-Catholic platform HazteOir—two vans with electronic screens and a bus—was circling this Wednesday morning along Pablo Neruda de Vallecas Avenue, in front of the Madrid Assembly. The speakers were missing, but there were plenty of journalists, who came by the dozens to the headquarters of the regional Legislature (a record so far this term), for the appearance of Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to whom had called to explain his relationship with the Complutense University of Madrid according to the parameters of PP and Vox.
Subsection: the night before the Madrid president’s chief of staff, andHe had rushed to conclude that this Wednesday, Begoña Gómez would go “forward”in the language that both Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and his direct superior have adopted.
Begoña Gómez decided not to testify, amid interruptions from the PP representative on the commission promoted by the absolute regional majority of Díaz Ayuso. And before remaining silent, she has denounced, for the first time, that the case opened against her and promoted by far-right organizations and parties has “an obvious political objective.” After the president’s wife left the Assembly, another of the accused appeared: Joaquín Goyache. Rector of the Complutense University of Madrid and one of those investigated in the case that Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has been carrying on for months.
The commission and the questions from the parties that promote it had one objective: to support the guilt of Begoña Gómez and, if possible, mix it with unrelated matters such as the rescue of Air Europa or the presidency of the Government. The result has not been what the right wing expected. Goyache has denied any type of favorable treatment to Gómez during the decade that she collaborated with the UCM, has defended the cleanliness of all the processes surrounding the two master’s degrees and the chair that he directed until its recent cancellation and has denied the main lines of university-related charges.
One of his first responses has affected the detail that most excited the popular accusations of the case. Several months ago the lawyers from Vox, HazteOir, Manos Cleans and Iustitia Europa left the court visibly excited because Goyache had built a bridge that allowed them to reach Pedro Sánchez: their first meeting with Begoña Gómez about the chair had taken place in La Moncloa. This Wednesday, Goyache explained why: it was the summer of 2020, Spanish society was emerging from the confinements established by the COVD-19 pandemic and most of the university was closed.
As she explained, Begoña Gómez’s first proposal was to meet in the UCM area where she worked, “but it was closed.” Later he also proposed doing it electronically, by “videoconference”, but in the end he invited Goyache to go to La Moncloa. “I didn’t have any problems, it was going to be easier for safety reasons,” he said. Asked by the PP about this detail that at the time gave rise to the accusations and the judge, Goyache also denied having seen Pedro Sánchez that day.
The relationship of the chair with Begoña Gómez has hovered over a good part of this Wednesday’s session. The truck that HazteOir, one of the popular accusations, drove past the door of the Madrid Assembly, ironically with a message: “Today the professor Begoña is coming.” The fundamentalist organization insists on ignoring the difference between a public university professor in the strict sense and the figure of the “extraordinary professorship”: programs financed by private companies in collaboration with public universities with less demanding requirements for their direction.
Goyache explained some other things. He said that Gómez was the contact between the UCM and two companies: Reale Seguros and Fundación La Caixa. “The chair is created in an agreement with two institutions, it is not created with Mrs. Begoña Gómez, but with two very great institutions,” he stressed. He then assured that Begoña Gómez is not a professor and that although no other chair director has a “similar profile” – without a higher degree – it is something feasible in these cases: “They may not be doctors or graduates and propose or direct a chair.” “The co-directorship of an extraordinary chair does not have any academic work, no qualification is required, they are managers, the type of qualifications that are required for regulated teaching activities are not required, it is a management task.” The rector described it as an “aberration” to affirm that they made Begoña Gómez a professor.
He was also blunt in denying that anyone gave favored treatment to Gómez for being the wife of the President of the Government, another of Judge Peinado’s main lines of investigation. “Of course not,” he said the first time. “Everything was absolutely legal and regular, things were done very well,” he later assured. The representative of Vox, whose party is the popular prosecutor in the case and has access to the statements of the accused and witnesses, then asked if the vice chancellor Juan Carlos Doadrio said that he felt forced to hire Gómez: “What is said in the media and something else what he said in court.” And before the judge, he recalled, he stated that “he never felt pressured.” “I have the transcript of your statement,” the rector replied to the Vox regional representative when she questioned his words.
The words of Joaquín Goyache are the words of an accused but they coincide with what the UCM has been publicly defending in recent years, even before the judicial case existed. Already in 2023, a lawyer requested information from the center and it defended that it had Gómez because of his experience and his long history of collaborations with the university. The same thing that, in writing, he recently communicated to Judge Peinado.
María Elvira Gutiérrez-Vierna, auditor of the UCM, was the last to appear at the Regional Assembly and during the interrogation she pointed out the only irregularity that she admits in the case, an administrative and non-criminal irregularity, and which has to do with the authorization of payment of several invoices. She did it when that function would correspond to the rector. “It is a breach that leads to the nullity of the contract, in my opinion,” said the person appearing, who had already stated this in a report. And it was the center, through the vice-rector of Economy, who ended up approving the payment by delegation. However, he ruled out that some of these invoices were cut up and also denied the existence of false invoices.
“She abused her status as the President’s wife”
Much of Gómez’s appearance became a mix of questions and boos. Questions from the representatives of PP and Vox filled with affirmations and boos from PSOE and Más Madrid who reproached, often without success, that the PP deputy and president of the commission, Susana Pérez, was so permissive when the two right-wing parties They clearly exceeded the purpose of the commission: the irregularities in the Complutense.
Mercedes Zarzalejo was the popular deputy in charge of beginning the interrogation, to whom ignorance cannot be attributed, since she is a doctor of law. Their questions, despite the interrogative intonation, were in practice statements in which the conclusions of the popular ones were already evident; for example: “Why did she abuse her status as the wife of the President of the Government to create a professional career that until then she had never had?”
Gómez had entered the commission room accompanied by the PSOE spokesperson, Juan Lobato, and other socialist deputies. The moment could be recorded without impediments by the cameras because the Assembly staff had relegated the journalists without equipment to one side of the hallway, behind a cordon. Once seated and after Zarzalejo’s first volley, Gómez explained that she would not answer the questions, but by doing so she was already rejecting some of the popular deputy’s statements. “For 25 years I have been working in consulting and teaching, I have coordinated teams, directed projects, advised more than fifty professionals in the private sector and the third sector. 12 years ago I began a collaboration with the Complutense, as co-director of a master’s degree with its own degrees to train professionals specialized in social and sustainability projects. It is in 2020 when this collaboration expands with the creation of an extraordinary professorship, which is a common practice within public and unpaid universities,” he said. Then she defended having led “a professional life built with a lot of effort, like one more,” as “millions of women do every day in our country.”
Unlike in court, where the interrogation is suspended when the declarant refuses to answer, in the Assembly the questions continued, to the indignation of the PSOE. The PP Law doctor showed that for her, anyone who does not testify is because they have done something bad, no matter what the Constitution says. “An innocent person who feels persecuted by her husband’s political adversaries would defend herself tooth and nail,” determined Zarzalejo, after an intervention in which she blamed Gómez for “sneaking into the world of the university” and “disguising herself as a professor.” . He also tried to link this matter with the corruption investigation of former Minister José Luis Ábalos.
Gómez remained unfazed, occasionally drumming her fingers, occasionally glancing at the phone, but almost always looking the deputies in the face. Even when the Vox spokesperson, Ana Cuartero, went for elevation at the start of her interrogation, in which many substantive doubts were not raised either. “The intellectual author of the corruption plot that motivated this investigative commission is her husband, Pedro Sánchez,” she launched. According to this story, Gómez would be a “front man” who acts “servilely.” When the deputy called the head of the Executive “autocrat,” the president of the commission, Susana Pérez Quislant, considered that she had gone too far. He asked Cuartero to remove it, but she refused without giving further explanations. He could have argued that the epithet was milder than the “Stalinist” that the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, usually dedicates to Sánchez, but he did not do so.
PSOE and Más Madrid intervened to question the very existence and development of the commission. “They seek to lynch the president by lynching his wife,” protested socialist Marta Bernardo, after remembering that the PP “has vetoed on five occasions” investigating deaths in nursing homes during Covid. Manuela Bergerot, from Más Madrid, recalled other vetoes, such as the appearance of Ayuso’s Chief of Staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, due to hoaxes against the press. “The Community allocates 0.02% of its budget to the chairs that want to investigate with this commission,” he contextualized. President Pérez Quislant was inflexible, ordering them to shut up. “This is not the purpose of the commission,” he repeated. His regulatory zeal relaxed slightly when the deputies finished with Gómez.
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