Cole Sinanian
AS Madrid judge Juan Carlos Peinado charges ahead with his influence peddling case against the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Begoña Gomez, a growing list of characters have made headlines in the complex legal proceedings, which have been condemned by some Spanish commentators and Sanchez himself as a far-right witch hunt.
Although an investigation by the Guardia Civil in May yielded no solid evidence against Gomez, the case has caused a major stir in Spanish politics, nearly bringing the prime minister to resign.
Here are the names you need to know.
Begoña Gomez Fernandez
The Bilbao-born marketing expert and wife of Pedro Sanchez worked as Director of the Inmark Group — a Madrid-based business-development company — for 18 years.
Since 2020, she’s held the position of Executive Director of the Africa Center at the IE University business school, and most recently, Director-Chair of the Masters of Competitive Social Transformation, a business master’s program run by Madrid’s Complutense University.
In 2018, an investigation by the newspaper OKDIARIO found that she’d lied on her CV, describing a diploma she’d received from a private, un-official business school as an official university degree.
Her most recent legal troubles emerged when, back in April, an anti-corruption union associated with the far right called Manos Limpias (Clean Hands) filed a complaint accusing her of influence trafficking and abusing her connections to her husband’s government to help grant public funding to a company linked to Juan Carlos Barrabes, a businessman and former colleague of Gomez’s at Complutense.
According to the Manos Limpias complaint, itself based on newspaper articles of questionable veracity, Gomez took advantage of her political position by signing letters of recommendation for the approval of millions of euros from both Spain’s Ministry of Economy and the European Social Fund for a business seeking to “detect, train and incorporate unemployed young people into the digital market,” the endorsement letter reads.
Gomez has remained largely silent regarding the accusations, but her husband has been vocal in her defence:
“My wife is an honest and responsible professional and my government is a clean government,” Sanchez told Congress in May.
Juan Carlos Peinado
A 69-year-old Madrid judge, the Gomez case is not Juan Carlos Peinado’s first to originate with a Manos Limpias complaint.
Back in 2015, Peinado filed a complaint by the organisation against two Madrid city councillors who were under investigation for antisemitic tweets they had posted years earlier.
And in 2019, Peinado led a case against 12 journalists who had allegedly leaked classified information regarding the Catalan independence group Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), although the case was eventually thrown out.
The judge has pursued Gomez’s case relentlessly, going as far as to call Sanchez to testify, to which the prime minister refused, instead filing a lawsuit against the judge.
In addition to his legal career, Peinado has worked as an associate professor at Complutense.
Juan Carlos Barrabes
The entrepreneur and businessman at the centre of the Gomez scandal has run a handful of successful companies, including a mountaineering supply business and an internet consulting agency.
He has testified to having met with Gomez at Moncloa on numerous occasions regarding the master’s program Gomez directs, twice of which the prime minister was also present.
During his testimony on July 15, he stated that there was nothing irregular about the meetings, and that they dealt solely with business innovation.
He also said that Gomez had called the meetings, and that he was paid for them only for his position as a professor in the master’s program.
Marta Castro
A lawyer and executive committee member for the far-right nationalist party Vox, Marta Castro has represented the prosecution against Gomez.
She was appointed to unify the right-wing groups that represent the so-called “popular accusations” seeking to convict Gomez, which include, in addition to Vox and Manos Limpias; HazteOir (make yourself heard), a Catholic, anti-abortion organisation associated with the far-right; Iustitia Europa, an anti-globalisation group; and the Political Regeneration Movement, whose stated aim is to “put an end to party politics and political parties.”
Miguel Bernad Remon — Manos Limpias
Once a leader of the far-right, neo-francoist political party Frente Nacional, Bernad now is the executive director of Manos Limpias, an organisation he founded in 1995 after the dissolution of the Frente Nacional in 1993.
Bernad has stated that he opened the Manos Limpias complaint after hearing of Gomez’s endorsement letters from the press, and accused the public prosecutor’s office of not doing its job and launching an investigation.
In 2016, the 82-year-old’s organisation was the subject of an extortion case brought by the Spanish National Court.
Bernad and Luis Pineda, president of financial services organisation Ausbanc, were accused of being involved in a scam that sought to pay off banks in exchange for not filing complaints against them, leading to their arrests in 2016.
Bernad was initially sentenced to three years in prison, but the Supreme Court acquitted him of his alleged crimes in March 2024 due to inability to prove the crimes he was accused of.
READ MORE
- Begoña Gomez in court: Judge calls Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s wife to testify as official suspect in influence peddling case
- Second report absolves Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s wife from any wrongdoing in influence peddling case
