ESCÁNDALO EN LA KITCHEN: NO METEN EN LA CAUSA LOS AUDIOS DE COSPEDAL CON VILLAREJO QUE LOS INCRIMINA

·28 min·2 clips

In a 2017 audio, Popular Party vice president María Dolores de Cospedal tells corrupt commissioner Villarejo they need to 'kill Prosecutor Grinda'.

1. Pandemia Digital covers the Kitchen trial, the Spanish corruption case investigating how the Popular Party used reserved funds and Commissioner José Villarejo to suppress evidence of the Gürtel corruption scandal. 2. The host presents the material; journalist Javier Ruiz and legal commentator Ernesto Kaiser are quoted extensively, along with TV news clips and the testimony of Bárcenas's son. 3. The episode's central controversy is the Kitchen trial court's decision to exclude nine audio recordings featuring María Dolores de Cospedal, former PP secretary-general and party number two. 4. Ernesto Kaiser explains the circular logic: Cospedal's case was archived by Judge García Castellón, so the court now rules that audios in which she appears cannot be admitted because she is no longer a defendant. 5. The excluded recordings include conversations from June and July 2017 in which Cospedal tells Villarejo that prosecutor Grinda must be 'killed' and that Bárcenas must be 'laminated.' 6. A 2023 National Police Internal Affairs report authenticated a nearly two-hour recorded conversation directly linking Cospedal to the plot to destroy Bárcenas's so-called 'B accounts' evidence of PP corruption. 7. Judge García Castellón had kept the recordings in a filing cabinet for two years without reviewing them; agents of the technological brigade reportedly received orders not to proceed with the audio analysis. 8. The PSOE has formally requested that Cospedal be reinvestigated following the 2023 authentication report, but the anti-corruption prosecution has already removed both Cospedal and the PP from the Kitchen case. 9. Former Interior Minister Fernández Díaz and his number two, Francisco Martínez, are seated in the trial dock; both their defenses have requested that the entire cause be nullified and all Villarejo recordings excluded as evidence. 10. Villarejo himself appears at the trial not as a defendant but as a written participant in his own defense — a procedural quirk the host calls 'rocambolesque.' 11. The PP is not seated in the dock as a corporate defendant, despite the PSOE and PSOE-affiliated accusers requesting its inclusion as a beneficiary of the Kitchen operation. 12. Bárcenas's son (identified by the host as the musician from Taburete, star of the most recent Torrente film) testified about a kidnapping attempt on the family by an intruder disguised as a priest. 13. The fake priest knew the exact layout of the family home, the mother's deep religiosity, and Bárcenas's travel schedule from New York — details the son says prove it was a planned operation. 14. When overpowered, the fake priest stabbed Bárcenas's mother before she escaped through a window; the son interpreted the attacker's expression as 'this went wrong.' 15. The driver of Bárcenas who participated in the Kitchen plot received 48,000 euros from reserved government funds; his lawyer's aggressive courtroom behavior drew a rebuke from the presiding judge. 16. PP spokesperson Ana Vázquez appeared on the Risto program to deflect corruption discussion by pointing to a decade-old minor incident involving Podemos politician Rita Maestre — the host calls this a distraction strategy. 17. Journalist Javier Ruiz had previously been a victim of the state cloaca network, according to the host: his TV program Tomorrow 4 was canceled after he won ratings against Ferreras, an ally of Villarejo's network. 18. The episode presents the Kitchen case as paradigmatic of judicial contamination in Spain, with the host arguing that the PP leadership — including Mariano Rajoy and Cospedal — will likely escape accountability. 19. The episode suits listeners following Spanish political corruption, the Gürtel and Kitchen cases, judicial independence debates, or the PP's historical links to Villarejo. 20. Listeners seeking non-political content, content outside Spain, or a neutral presentation of the PP's defense will find little relevance here.

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