• Obituary Luis Roldán dies at the age of 78

  • Newspaper library Stories that changed Spain: Roldán

The man who has died in Zaragoza at the age of 78 put a face and eyes, briefcases of money and raincoats, espionage and crazy parties in his underpants, at the time of the great decline of the most important president of the Spanish democracy reborn in 1978. From the glory of power to public ridicule and from respect for authority to fugitive indecency.

Luis Roldán

's trip

-with all its shocking episodes fictionalized and immortalized in the cinema- was the beginning of the end of felipismo, plunged the PSOE into astonishment and embarrassment, and ended up being the main trigger for Jordi Pujol's decision to leave Felipe González and force him to call the 1996 elections in advance.

Felipe González, the man with whom

Spain

had fallen in love so much that in 1982 Spaniards on the right and those on the left voted for him, he was not even his shadow in that

horribilis

legislature from 93 to 96. The disappeared and lamented Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba said that they were the three most horrible years of his life.

Since his recently turned 80 and very well behaved, González has confessed many times that in the decline of those cursed years he couldn't stand himself.

Enrique Guerrero

, one of the socialists who lived through the time in the same sanhedrin of power, defines in a book the state of mind of the then president, when the management of the Government was summed up in a list of cases of corruption.

One after another.

The Roldán case, the Rubio case, the wiretapping of the Cesid, the Filesa case, the reserved funds case

... Resignation of a minister every week.

"Felipe is a tortured character who does not see the way to leave. He is a man locked up in

La Moncloa

, inaccessible, nobody knows exactly what he wants, what he does, what he is looking for, a bitter guy," says Guerrero.

González's bitterness had many faces, but the most ridiculous, embarrassing and humiliating for the president was that of Luis Roldán.

It is not only that he had been on the verge of appointing him Minister of the Interior after the resignation of

José Luis Corcuera

.

Not that the socialists defended his innocence -Roldán was a true master in the art of pretense-, it is that the secret services, the Civil Guard and the Minister of the Interior who presented his resignation for it.

After some high officials had warned that this could happen.

The impossible happened and during the months that the escape lasted, Felipe González had no other objective in his life or in his government than to find him and bring him to Spain as a prisoner.

"Get him", he said to

Belloch

when he made him biminister.

The day she got it, the party went in style, as Belloch's satisfied face showed.

President González had to promise and even swear that he had not the slightest idea that Roldán had amassed a corrupt fortune, and that he found out everything from the press.

First in

Diario 16

and later in

EL MUNDO

.

"I am honest, very honest, and I am going to prove it," Roldán told him when his adventures began to be published.

"We were not prepared to live with the corrupt. I could never imagine the number of important things that a president of the Government ignores," González told journalist

Julia Navarro

.

Time came to prove him right in that legislature, but the political wear of his figure was unstoppable.

He had wanted to retire on the eve of the '93 elections for a reason. He sensed what was coming his way.

He did not want to repeat, but his party tightened the nuts so much - he had no successor - that he allowed himself to be convinced.

Over time, he has recognized that it was a mistake.

"I was the problem and the solution at the same time," he said in one of his lapidary phrases.

"Go away, Mr. Gonzalez"

González beat Aznar in the general elections in March 1993, in the company of the two judges -Baltasar Garzón and

Ventura Pérez Mariño-

whom he signed to symbolize his commitment to fighting corruption.

"I have understood the message," he said on election night.

Both left their seat before the end of the legislature.

And they left the way clear to another judge with more political ambition, Juan Alberto Belloch.

Felipe González and the PSOE were running out of time in scandals, conspiracies, war fighters against renovators, and save yourself who can.

Belloch, as has been confirmed in the memoirs of the socialist leaders and in

Bitter victory,

of Pedro J. Ramírez, founder of EL MUNDO, was the living image of the conspiracy.

Belloch aspired to succeed Felipe González as president, and he believed that the capture of Roldán gave him points.

As he responded to

Jesús Quintero

,

the Loco de la Colina

, González felt like the bullfighters.

Every year they say they retire and every year they come back.

Power screws even when power becomes torture.

Joseph Bono

, in his memoirs, recounts a meeting of socialist leaders in November 1995. They went to Moncloa to convince him to run again for the general elections in 1996 and the president confessed to them: "I am not in a position to pull the plug. the customization of the project is very bad; in 93 I wanted to leave, however I was forced to continue. I'm at the limit of my strength. I realize that now people don't pay attention to me anymore. I can win that character ( José María Aznar), but I am not tempted to introduce myself because I believe that if I campaign as I should, in the end you will have my funeral".

Aides tell him that personal reasons and exhaustion are not relevant in politics.

"I am not free even to leave."

This is how he saw himself,

going every week to Congress to listen to the censorship of the PP leadership team chaired by Aznar.

"What will be the next scandal, Mr. González?" That beginning of the 1994 State of the Nation debate echoed in his head.

The "go away, Mr. González" turned into a nightmare, when the director general of the Civil Guard escaped, the governor of the

Banco de España

was imprisoned for corruption, its first vice president and its defense minister resigned for illegal wiretapping of the Cesid, the agriculture minister also for suspected investments;

and add and continue.

With Luis Roldán still on the run, President González confessed to journalist

Carlos Luis Álvarez

,

Cándido

: "They want to take me directly from La Moncloa to jail."

"Handcuffed?" the journalist joked.

"Yes," the president replied seriously.

With that state of mind captured by

José García Abad

in

Las mil caras de Felipe González

, he said goodbye to the Government after almost 14 years in Moncloa.

Exhausted and relieved to lose power.

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