Spain’s former interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz is facing up to 15 years in prison as the trial for “Operación Kitchen” enters its final phase.
It concerns a clandestine operation allegedly run from the heart of the Interior Ministry under the centre-right Partido Popular (PP) government.
The case, known as Operación Kitchen, revolves around events between 2013 and 2016 during the government of former prime minister Mariano Rajoy.
Prosecutors allege that the Interior Ministry set up a clandestine “patriotic police” unit whose mission was to spy on the PP’s former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, and steal incriminating documents before they could reach the judge investigating the Gürtel corruption scandal.
Bárcenas had turned against the party after being arrested and was in possession of hard drives and documents that allegedly proved the existence of a parallel accounting system (caja B) used for illegal party financing over many years.
According to the indictment, the operation involved illegal surveillance, informants, break-ins, phone tapping and pressure on Bárcenas and his family to retrieve or destroy the evidence.
At the centre of the trial is Jorge Fernández Díaz, who served as interior minister from December 2011 to November 2016.
Prosecutors are demanding 15 years in prison for him on charges of cover-up, embezzlement of public funds and violation of privacy.
His former right-hand man, Francisco Martínez, the former secretary of state for security, faces the same 15-year request and is also a key defendant, along with several senior police officials who allegedly carried out the operational work.
On June 1, 2026, two other defendants — former operational deputy director of Spain’s National Police Eugenio Pino, known as the DAO, and former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo — testified, setting out conflicting defence strategies.
Pino defended the operation as a legal “intelligence operation” aimed at locating Bárcenas’ hidden money abroad, particularly in Switzerland, and admitted authorising €2,000 a month in reserved funds for the informant Sergio Ríos, Bárcenas’ driver, but denied any illegal goal of stealing documents or protecting PP leaders. He portrayed Villarejo as acting somewhat as a “free agent”.
Villarejo, for whom prosecutors seek 19 years — the heaviest sentence in the case, on charges that include passive bribery — partially retracted earlier statements.
He described the core operation as “official and correct” but claimed Mariano Rajoy “took advantage” of it through intermediaries to obtain information that could affect him. He pointed to Ignacio Cosidó, then director general of the National Police, as a key figure who instructed him, and suggested others, including Fernández Díaz, were partly misled. Cosidó, who is not among the defendants, gave evidence earlier as a witness and has distanced himself entirely from the events.
On May 28, 2026, both Fernández Díaz and Martínez testified before the National Court (Audiencia Nacional).
The former minister denied any knowledge of the operation until it became public in the media in late 2015 and insisted he never ordered any illegal actions.
Martínez largely backed his former superior’s account. Both refused to answer most questions from the prosecution.
Martínez did, though, partly contradict Fernández Díaz during testimony by saying the minister had asked him in 2013 about a collaborator close to the Bárcenas family. Fernández Díaz denied this.
The trial, which opened in April 2026, has already heard evidence from more than 150 witnesses, including multiple former police chiefs, and is now in its ninth week and final stages, with Villarejo’s questioning set to resume on June 9 and a verdict expected later this year.
While the PP was publicly denying involvement in the Gürtel financing scandal, senior figures stand accused of weaponising state institutions to protect the party from the consequences of its own alleged corruption.
PP deputy secretary for sectoral coordination Alma Ezcurra, an MEP, said the courts must act with “full independence” and that “if there are culprits, they should pay”.
Ezcurra stressed that the PP would not single out judges, talk of “lawfare” or claim “there are State operations”, contrasting her party with the Spanish Socialists (PSOE), who have been much more critical of the judiciary investigating the many corruption claims against their party.
The scandal adds to a long pattern of Spain’s major establishment parties being embroiled in similar affairs, feeding a wider debate about the rule of law and public trust in the country’s institutions.
A judge at Spain’s National Court (Audiencia Nacional) has linked the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) to an alleged scheme set up to “systematically and continuously destabilise” court cases affecting the party and the Spanish Government. https://t.co/msDVeU6a0k
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) May 28, 2026
