The plots of mediator case they put the PSOE on red alert from the first days of knowing some of the first details of the cause investigated by court number 4 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but since then concern has not stopped growing in the socialist ranks. The federal leadership of the party was aware from the first moment of the destructive and toxic potential of this case of alleged corruption that affects various positions of the party in the Canary Islands, the then deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes and his nephew Taishet Fuentes, former general director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands, and is currently one of the key issues in the meetings and debates of the party to all levels, both in the sphere of Ferraz, and in that of the parliamentary group in Congress, and obviously in that of the party in the Canary Islands.
In this frame, The federal leadership and the socialist leadership in the Canary Islands try to find formulas to stop the political repercussions of the scandal even though they consider that the party has taken the necessary measures to respond to the demand for purification of political responsibilities. The immediate resignation of Fuentes Curbelo as deputy and the expulsion from the party, also sudden, of both him and his nephew continues to be considered by the PSOE as an appropriate response and proportional to the seriousness of the charges against both.
review files
On the other hand, they consider that the Government of the Canary Islands has adopted for its part the only thing that was in his power to act on it by reviewing the files in which the Fuentes acted during their respective stages in the General Directorate of Livestock, in addition to making themselves available to justice for any investigation in which they could collaborate. They point out in all socialist areas the forcefulness with which they have acted against those involved and the commitment, both from the President of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and from the head of the central Executive, Pedro Sánchez, that the fate of any other implicated will be the same, the expulsion of the party and the immediate dismissal in case of holding any public office.
However, as details of the indictment and other information about the ramifications of the plot become known, the Concern is growing because of the fear that new militants may appear or socialist charges implicated or related in some way both to the mediator of the alleged corruption network, Antonio Navarro, and to some of the companies cited in the summary. This is the authentic obsession in the federal leadership of the party and among the Canarian socialists, who have already assumed the impossibility of avoiding some type of electoral cost both in the Canary Islands and at the state level in view of the regional and local elections on May 28 .
It is on these two fronts that Ferraz is trying to act together with the leadership of the Canarian PSOE at this time, that is, trying to anticipate the possibility of new defendants appearing and knowing their names and positions in advance, and looking for measures and answers. coordinated to curb the reputational cost of the case and its political and electoral costs.
Sources from the federal leadership acknowledge that the concern in this regard is “maximum” and that contacts with the Canarian socialists are constant. Both parties are tracking and analyzing the summary of the plot and the investigations that are becoming known and assessing the possible consequences. Also evaluating the possibility of acting internally in some of the most prominent spaces, such as the case of Fuerteventura, although for the moment without considering causing an internal crisis in the insular direction or in the electoral lists of the island, a possibility that has come to be on the table but for now discarded.
What most worries the PSOE leadership is the possibility that the various and complex ramifications of the case continue to grow and expand and new names appear. From the outset, they believe that the part related to the Fuentes and their relations with the mediator and with the businessmen to whom they promised favors in exchange for money is very limited to those two cases, former socialist charges. Once verified by the parliamentary group in Congress that the five national deputies who attended that dinner in a restaurant in Madrid with Fuentes Curbelo, Navarro and some businessman, have no connection to the case, nor did they participate in parties with prostitutes, As the mediator of the plot came to assure, the PSOE believes that this part of the scandal is controlled because the summary does not mention more names, although they can never rule out that they may appear since the investigation is still ongoing. The slogan in this sense from Ferraz and from the Canary Islands is “let the justice act, because it takes a year and a half of investigation and there are no more involved than those who are no longer in the party.”
The part about which they have the most doubts is the one related to the operations that involve senior officials of the Civil Guard, an issue on which the Ministry of Interior. The head of the department himself, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, is very attentive to all the ongoing investigations and has very detailed information in this regard from the police leadership. In this sense, it should be noted that one of the senior officials of the National Directorate of the body, Rafael Martínez, current deputy general director of Logistics and Innovation, was promoted to this position by Marlaska last September from the Higher Police Headquarters in the Canary Islands, which he occupied since October 2020. That is, he held a key position during the stage in which much of the investigation into the central facts of the Mediator case.
