About fortnight ago, as we both relished scoops of Spanish socialist sleaze while boarding a plane to Hungary, I ran into a longtime pal who splits life between the two nations. My friend’s fusion of dogged rightism and bicultural adaptability — let’s call this mid-40s father of three “Roger” — is the stuff of legend in both Madrid and Budapest. Yet for once I pitied him. We’d both found out that we had chipped, as unwitting taxpayers, into the sexual delights indulged by a former transport minister of ours (the punter is yet to thank 30-odd million of us). Yet unlike Roger, I had no kids to shield from the gruesome shitshow that has engulfed Spain since.
Strings of material had been leaked that day by Spain’s equivalent of the FBI. One lurid tape had the character in question, José Luis Ábalos, and the bouncer he had enrolled as chief of staff, “Koldo”, rating prostitutes in the spirit you would review cuisines, movie options, cocktails — or cattle. “One is hot as a stove”, pondered the minister in a bind of indecisiveness, “but the other kisses bloody well”. Koldo’s reply to the boss: “then go for your favorite — or both”.
Roger and I doubted the government would still stand on our return. Three weeks on, the sleaze mounts, but the cabinet hangs on. The illustrious duo was also found to have arranged a busload of Brazilian hookers to unload at a hotel while on the road supervising works on a high-speed train line. The sexual shindig was held mid-pandemic, but such outings remained routine beyond Covid. Perhaps Keith Moon and his rocker lot were slightly less merciful to furnishings, but the cocaine leftovers in our dignitaries’ trashed suite were Hall-of-Fame material. Body mass was not the only sense in which these two were not “lightweight”.
The hotel involved dutifully withheld CCTV to deny allegations, even as the forged invoices it issued contradicted what its own employees had seen. Paradores, a luxury chain—its historic and natural landmarks a staple of Spanish high-end tourism—is state-owned. As with countless other Spanish companies, it is infested by patronage appointments, its boardroom packed with bigwigs, yes-men, or cronies du jour.
True to mafia tactics, the omertà extended to the cabinet, even as Ábalos marked a year in the wilderness since being disgraced from it in a different scandal. One of our self-styled “feminist” ministers even feigned ignorance of the events, despite having “escorted” — your joke — our delegation of Holinesses that day, per her role as prefect in that city at the time. She has claimed only a misogynist could suspect awareness or involvement on her part. Legal minds concerned that Spain’s militant feminists have scuttled the presumption of innocence for men should take solace in the compensatory protections for the same male defendants if and when they turn out to be socialist. Here, female allies can be counted on to rush in their defense — a fair balance, they must think.
As soon as suspicions of this all began to emerge, Ábalos went out of his way to straight-facedly forswear prostitution on live TV. His role as minister for transport challenged, he presented himself as a Puritan minister: “I am against all sexual exploitation, and sickened when people have no other choice than to surrender to a relationship they otherwise wouldn’t”.
PM Pedro Sánchez, meanwhile, has proclaimed his trust betrayed, though some suspect that he was aware. Ábalos was key to his rise, and one of his closest confidantes until his ousting. When out to search his Valencia home, the same prosecutorial-investigative outlet for organized crime — the “UCO” — found him in good company. Sticking with Ábalos was one of his many assiduous escorts. The former minister’s version of events in court described her first as a cleaner, then a model, then a porn actress — and finally, indeed, a practitioner of the world’s oldest profession. She attempted to flee the scene with an item up her genitals. The underwear-housed flash drive stored Ábalos’ chat history with Sánchez.
A phalanx of hookers has since emerged as having surrounded Ábalos and Koldo. The former’s fondness of harlotry stood well beyond any plausible deniability when he took pains to swiftly and ardently deny one particular charge: that he’d slept with a trans prostitute. The broader scandal now engulfs his prior daytime affairs: the Koldo-Ábalos ring doubled as a placement agency for cherished sex workers to land menial roles at public companies. Pressing for a Romanian prostitute to land a secretary gig, another audio has Koldo stoically proclaim: “in life, you need skills beyond the bedroom” (of all pimps, he would know best). In yet another tape, he spoke in lewd language to a female state secretary in what is still alleged to be Spain’s most feminist administration ever: “you’re burning hot with those pants on”.
Ábalos still claims innocence in all cases with the dignified air of an MP (he was ousted from the socialist caucus but somehow retains his seat). He was even offered a top lobbying role at a bipartisan Brussels firm in exchange for resigning ahead of the storm, heightening suspicion as to whom he would implicate in the ongoing trial. Even if his silence had been bought, the plea bargain could push him to reconsider. Relative to the fate of others, he’s plenty bitter about his own already.
More revelations have gushed forth, yet the cabinet seems nowhere closer to crumbling down than when it came to power, in 2019, through a pledge-breaking deal with the far left and secessionists of all stripes (mostly Basque and Catalan). More Spaniards than prior feel we’ve ventured beyond the defensible in moral terms, if not in terms of public policy. Yet many more seem mystified, too, that such levels of villainy seem insufficient to topple our topmost ruling echelons. The moral freefall into the abyss began at least during Covid, when Ábalos and Koldo took lavish bribes from PPE contractors, as per the initial revelations in 2023. Those indignant at Partygate should count their blessings: Downing Street health rules were indeed defied but without theft, in moments of conviviality. Spanish socialist ministers, meanwhile, selfishly wheeled and dealt while people were kept off the deathbed of loved ones.
The old practice of arranging procurement bids is one Spaniards know too well. Yet amidst the dragnet of “Koldo’s case”, it has now metastasised — with socialists at the helm — into heretofore squeaky-clean multinationals, such as the infrastructure and renewables giant Acciona. Acciona has allegedly trespassed beyond the executive rigging of procurement contracts and into the offer of judicial leniency to shady companies and operators through connections with friendly prosecutors. Two such socialist-adjacent, private-public mediators — “Aldama” and Leire Díez — were disgraced in due time and await their own troubles in court, but their corruption seems mild relative to that of their political orchestrators. Aldama’s revelations have even befriended him to some of his former enemies.
The fall of each bigwig is followed by the same familiar pattern. Our PM initially swears by the person’s innocence, before swiftly distancing himself and moaning about his wounded trust. Having taken over from a right-of-centre government that faced its own reckoning with corruption, his strategy is not exactly — or not credibly — one of feigning decency. More likely, Sánchez knows full well his base would rather keep a corrupt, but socialist, top brass in place than hand the country over to the opposition. He keeps shrewdly utilising that partisan goodwill, or indulgence, towards his side’s bad faith. Cleansing the party is seen by socialist voters as too risky, so the current rot remains justifiable over the alternatives.
This same pattern met the imprisonment two weeks ago of Santos Cerdán, previously the party’s top commissar. He was even more crucial to Sánchez’s rise, to the point of rigging the primary the latter “won” in 2017 to become the party’s secretary-general and later prime-ministerial candidate.
Yet Cerdán — the name’s consonance with Spanish for “pig”, cerdo, is alas of no help to him at this hour — will now languish in a high-security prison for at least eight years (the man named to replace him had to instantly resign under his own share of sexual allegations). Could this fluid stream of revelations escalate to the PM? It is unclear that Sánchez’s role in the ring could be proved as easily. Not all skilled politicians ought to turn corrupt, but all corrupt politicians need extra skill at wielding power if they are to retain it—and Sánchez has proved all too apt at it since 2019, and further back within his party.
The firehose of sleaze may be far from running dry
His family members are less discreet, though that hasn’t affected him (yet). His wife, “Begoña”, was allegedly caught cashing in on her role as First Lady, getting corporate giants to chip into a college deanship she asked to have set up ad hoc to her eminent name. At least that wasn’t Roger’s money and mine footing the bill, but it was indeed the symbolic capital of Spanish meritocracy flung out the window. In fairness to the cult of progressive trailblazing, Begoña would have become Spain’s first-ever dean to lack even a basic university education. Sánchez’s brother, meanwhile, was among his first low-level appointments, placed to lead a local office for scenic arts for which he put no work, and whose mission he failed to describe to a graft jury when indicted.
The firehose of sleaze may be far from running dry. But if major revelations are in the offing, they may rather pertain to Venezuelan Chavismo’s connections to “Zapatero”, our last socialist PM before Sánchez — and vice-versa. If proven, they would likely implicate the latter by cover-up.
Even then, the near-certain parliamentary overhaul that elections will bring seems unlikely before the summer of 2027, when they are scheduled. Any no-confidence motion before then seems unlikely to meet a different fate than the two prior ones filed by the right-populist Vox party: the right-of-center PP’s meek abstention. The right’s fracture, befuddlingly, persists even as Sánchez’s regionalist acolytes remain in line. The latter would be foolish to withdraw now: their parties are historically purposed to squeeze the best deal out for their already-wealthy and highly autonomous regions, Sánchez’s straits make indulging them more necessary than ever. He already handed an unconstitutional amnesty to Catalan coup-plotters that has begun taking effect.
The right’s fracture, befuddlingly, persists
That, or there won’t be elections as scheduled. Only a fool can deny Sánchez’s personality has an authoritarian streak that translates into his politics. He has sought to hobble the free press with new legislation, while routinely attacking independent judges. He claims the right’s rise is a “threat to democracy”, and cheers the EU’s toying with censorship. He could invoke an emergency of some kind for a Schmittian extension of his rule — a takeover that, granted, will be declared “temporary” at first.
None of this should be taken to mean Spaniards condone what is afflicting them more than others would. If anything, as the abhorrent remains their daily companion, a version of the just-world bias may induce them into coping-by-normalisation (“if we’re really run by a mafia, anything short of rebellion is collusion; my couch feels comfy so it mustn’t be a mafia”). Any wake-up of the populace, furthermore, faces two hurdles before it takes effect. On one hand, Sánchez is backed by media enablers aplenty; the kind of legacy, post-fascist cultural institutions that toil for relevance by railing about 1930s fascism being back on the march. But for a brief slap on the wrist, they kept backing Sánchez on those grounds after the whirlwind of sleaze, even if they may despise his narcissism and poor judgement. The countervailing free press, meanwhile, is financially-challenged and weary of crackdowns to come. Global outlets seem uninterested: The Times has reported at length, but only after a spat with Sánchez over his cover-up of our nationwide blackout in late April.
The second cause runs deeper. The country is enthralled to the overweening sway that parties hold from appointing judges and public media bosses to swelling the state with ideological quangos and undermining trust and merit by prizing loyal insiders — even shielding them when they turn corrupt. The next faction in power will face the same few incentives to reform our “partitocracy”. Overlaid on the public’s internecine fractures, the system is simply not purposed to contain bad actors. Polarisation hasn’t propelled populist cleansers, but only old-stock operatives posing as such. As immorality seems to become one with the political profession, people are willing to justify — or look away from — their own side’s sleaze.
On our way out the plane in Budapest, Roger reminded me that Hungarians have long been fond of Torrente, the Dumb Arm of the Law (1998), Santiago Segura’s writer-actor dark comedy about an uncouth retired cop who clings onto a nefarious version of his old beat. Torrente’s misogyny, homophobia and fondness of prostitutes — in some ways a mirror image of Ábalos’ character, but far to the right — can only be taken lightly these days if displayed on the big screen — if that. Though hardly part of popular culture in Spain anymore, there’s something in it that Hungarians seem to trust is real about our national character. Not a flattering representation, yet as our politics seem to befit the stereotype more than ever, is it a wholly unfair one?
