The judge of the National Court José Luis Calama has rejected the request of former President of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to declare the “general nullity” of the Plus Ultra case. In a resolution issued this Friday, to which EL PAÍS has had access, the instructor dismisses the former socialist leader's argument that the case regarding alleged influence peddling to obtain the public rescue of the airline violates his rights. Calama has followed the criteria of the Prosecutor's Office, which has been in favor of dismissing Zapatero's complaint.
The former president's defense had requested that the "general nullity" of the investigation be declared and that "all evidence obtained" by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office be excluded from the procedure. In his opinion, throughout the investigation several of his rights have been violated and different “illicitly analyzed” evidence has been incorporated into the summary.
Among other arguments, the defense questioned whether the Court of Instruction 15 of Madrid, which investigated the public rescue of the airline in a pandemic in 2021, could take a derivative in 2025 on a possible crime of money laundering committed by the company's leadership and then refer it in 2026 to the Central Court of Instruction 2 of the National Court when the figure of Zapatero emerged.
Judge Calama supports the actions of the Madrid judge. It considers that “it adjusted to the legal rules of jurisdiction and distribution, without producing any procedural deviation that could affect” the fundamental rights of the former president. Furthermore, it emphasizes that at no time during the investigation has there been any action with “deviant intention or search for a different judge who favored a specific result.”
In this sense, the instructor recalls that the Constitutional Court has established in several of its rulings that the right to the judge predetermined by the law can only be violated "when the judicial interpretation of the competition rules arbitrarily and manifestly manipulates the content of the law." Something that, he maintains, has not happened in this case. Thus, he warns that “the existence of reasonable alternatives or technical discrepancy is not enough”; there must be a “gross deviation, without any normative support.”
The judge of the National Court insists that the investigation against Zapatero did not arise from “facts unrelated to the parent case”, that is, the investigation into alleged money laundering linked to the possible irregular use of the public loan of 53 million euros that the Government granted to Plus Ultra. And remember that the procedure is now also investigating whether Zapatero allegedly used influence peddling to get Pedro Sánchez's Executive to approve said disbursement.
As part of his complaint, the former president's lawyer asked that a dozen judicial resolutions be annulled. Among others, the ruling of November 2025 to open a line of investigation into this alleged money laundering after the rescue of Plus Ultra; the entry and search orders at the airline's headquarters, executed last December; the decision to send the case to the National Court; the records in Zapatero's office and in his daughters' company; the partial blocking of the former president's accounts; and creating a separate piece about the jewelry found in his office safe.
Calama rejects the defense request, considering that all the resolutions that have been issued within the framework of this investigation are duly motivated, so he understands that Zapatero has not seen his rights violated. Furthermore, the instructor recalls that the Criminal Chamber of the National Court already endorsed his actions in this procedure by dismissing an appeal from one of the former directors of Plus Ultra, also investigated in this case.
