Magistrate Juan Carlos Peinado summons Bego summons Begoña Gómez for a preliminary hearing on Tuesday at 6:00 p.m.

Magistrate Juan Carlos Peinado has summoned Begoña Gómez, wife of Pedro Sánchez, to attend this Tuesday the preliminary hearing necessary to open an oral trial against the partner of the President of the Government. The magistrate, who announced his decision this Monday, has set the event for 6:00 p.m. this Tuesday. Defense sources have opened the door for the appearance to be suspended, since, due to the short time with which it has been notified, some parties find it difficult to attend that call. In fact, Begoña Gómez's lawyer has already requested a postponement, as he had planned a trip to Barcelona at that time due to other professional commitments.

Through a brief resolution of just two pages, dated this Monday, Peinado explains that he accepts the defense briefs presented by Begoña Gómez - where he demands her acquittal and denies that he influenced any authority to create the extraordinary professorship that he co-directed at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) - and by his assistant at La Moncloa, Cristina Álvarez, also prosecuted. And that, therefore, it proceeds to summon them on the “closest possible day and time” to the preliminary hearing required by law to be able to send them to the bench. Álvarez has requested the postponement of the summons because he is currently traveling in Miami and will not return to Spain until September 28, according to legal sources.

The Law of the Jury Court provides that, once the defendants have presented their corresponding defense briefs, the instructor sets this preliminary hearing so that the parties can rule on the “appropriation of opening a trial.” In this event, which may not be held if all the accused request it, there is the possibility of carrying out proceedings (such as witness statements), but Peinado has rejected all proposals - although, according to the regulations, more can be raised at the hearing itself. In fact, in the resolution notified this Monday, the magistrate has ruled out the request by Gómez's lawyer that José Manuel Ruano De La Fuente, professor of the Department of Political Science of the UCM and co-director of that extraordinary chair of Competitive Social Transformation that he keeps under suspicion, be questioned as a witness. “It is not considered essential to decide on the opening of the oral trial,” the instructor responded to the defense.

This is the second preliminary hearing held in the case opened against the wife of the President of the Government and leader of the PSOE. Last June, the magistrate already called this event and then ordered the opening of a jury trial against Begoña Gómez for four crimes (influence peddling, business corruption, embezzlement and misappropriation). However, as the Provincial Court of Madrid partially corrected it in July and forced him to withdraw two of those crimes (business corruption and misappropriation), Peinado is now forced to take this step again for the only two crimes endorsed by the superior court (embezzlement and influence peddling).

Although the parties can raise the file of the case in the preliminary hearing, the defenses do not foresee that Peinado will change the script he has written since he took over the investigations in April 2024 after a complaint from the pseudo-union Manos Liminas. The magistrate will present to the popular jury the thesis that Begoña Gómez took advantage of her status as the wife of the President of the Government to extend a network of influences to project her professional career at the Complutense University of Madrid, where she co-directed an extraordinary professorship - within which software was developed thanks to the support of companies such as Google and Indra.

“The sole relationship of kinship by marriage with the highest authority of the Government of the nation, in certain contexts and circumstances, such as those analyzed here, can entail efficient moral pressure in order to constitute the crime of influence peddling,” the Madrid Court stated when validating that part of the process. Furthermore, according to the investigating judge, Sánchez's partner used the support of her assistant at La Moncloa to help her with her private work.

The ultra-Catholic association Hazte Oír, which leads the group of popular accusations, has already announced that it will request 13 years in prison for Begoña Gómez in a future jury trial. For its part, the Complutense, which is considered injured, claims 113,000 euros. And the Prosecutor's Office has announced that it will request the acquittal of both Sánchez's wife and Cristina Álvarez.

Defense sources assumed that Juan Carlos Peinado, who will retire on September 27 at the latest, was going to step on the accelerator again in these weeks so as not to delay the holding of the preliminary hearing, which served the first time for the popular accusations to demand the withdrawal of Begoña Gómez's passport (a controversial measure that was accepted by the investigating judge and later annulled by the Madrid Court).