MADRID, Spain – The National High Court judge investigating the dirty operations case, Santiago Pedraz, has issued an order in which, in an unusually forceful tone, he reprimands the PSOE for not sending him the contracts of the lawyers who have worked for the party between 2021 and 2025. The PSOE excused the delay on a query made to the General Council of the Legal Profession regarding professional secrecy and on the difficulty of gathering the information in the middle of the pre-campaign, with the magistrate accusing it of “artificially reopening a debate already resolved” by him previously, reminding it that it is the judge who directs the investigation and granting the Socialists another 15 days to send what he requested.
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“It corresponds exclusively to the jurisdictional body to direct the investigation and determine the scope of the measures agreed. It cannot be admitted that the recipient of a judicial requirement conditions its compliance on the prior approval of a professional corporation or on its own assessment of the relevance, proportionality or appropriateness of the measure agreed,” the order says.
The PSOE is again required to, within a maximum period of 15 days given the dispersion alleged, without further delay and without subordinating compliance to extra-procedural actions of its own exclusive initiative, provide the requested documentation or, where it considers some specific case of professional secrecy to concur, precisely and individually identify the affected documents and the legal reasons that would justify their exclusion.
“The submission by the PSOE of a query before the General Council of Spanish Lawyers has no suspensive effect whatsoever with respect to the requirement agreed by this judicial body. No legal provision attributes to said unilateral initiative the capacity to paralyse an investigative measure or to defer compliance with a firm jurisdictional resolution. The party obliged by the requirement cannot evade compliance through the promotion of extra-procedural actions of a corporate nature,” the magistrate argues.
DESOBEDIENCIA PSOE: si el juez ordena la entrega de documentos, hay que obedecer. Y si no está de acuerdo, que recurra. Si no, se expone a cometer un delito 👇👇👇 PSOE deja pasar las 48 horas que le dio el juez Pedraz para entregar los contratos https://t.co/oIgfG20e2B
— Juez Eutimius (Jesús Villegas) (@eutimius) October 23, 2026
He recalls that in his ruling issued on 6 October he already contemplated excluding any information that could be affected by professional secrecy. “Consequently, the question whose clarification the PSOE’s representation claims to pursue was already the subject of weighing by this investigator, without it being appropriate to artificially reopen a debate previously resolved in the jurisdictional seat,” he notes.
He also complains that the PSOE does not identify specific documents or specific points with respect to which an effective affectation of professional secrecy concurs, saying that instead the party “limits itself, on the contrary, to sustaining a generic and indiscriminate invocation with respect to all the documentation required.” “Such an approach is incompatible with constitutional and ordinary jurisprudence, which requires a specific, individualised and verifiable justification of the concrete injury that the delivery of certain information could produce,” he concludes.
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“The measure agreed is necessary to verify regulatory compliance and only if it considers that it incriminates it can it oppose,” Pedraz indicates, for whom “the alleged territorial dispersion of the documentation, its non-centralisation or the burdens derived from the party’s political activity constitute internal circumstances exclusively attributable to the party required.” “Such reasons,” he maintains, “cannot prevail against the constitutional duty to collaborate with the Administration of Justice nor justify non-compliance with a judicial resolution. Admitting such a claim would be equivalent to placing the development of the judicial investigation in a situation of dependence on a procedure outside the case and promoted unilaterally by one of those affected.”
