• Interior The director of the Civil Guard resigns after her husband was charged in a corruption case
  • Investigation The family plot of María Gámez's husband to divert public funds that has ended up costing him his job

The Ministry of the Interior has become a kind of permanent powder keg where Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska resists despite the wear and tear of his management and his figure. Yesterday, while the head of Interior finished his telematic intervention before the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the European Parliament to report on the tragedy of the Melilla fence on June 24, a fact that has caused the censorship of the partners of the Government, the departure of María Gámez as director of the Civil Guard was known. An unexpected march that occurs in full anxiety for the Armed Institute, immersed in several scandals such as the Cuarteles case or the Mediator case.

The official justification given by Gámez is that her departure is her own decision and that it is due to the fact that her husband "has been summoned in the framework of a judicial procedure." Specifically, as it was known on Wednesday, the judge accuses him of prevarication, embezzlement and laundering for the diversion of public funds from the IDEA agency to a business plot.

His departure adds one more notch to a ministry that lives in a permanent state of convulsion, not only subject to criticism by the opposition, but has also received censorship from parties such as ERC or Bildu that support the governability of Pedro Sánchez. Marlaska is also a minister who provokes misgivings in Unidas Podemos for his positions in the gag law or the management of migrants with tragic cases such as the one experienced in Melilla or hot returns.

Only Sánchez seems to be the lifeline, the handhold that allows the continuity of the interior minister. Always in the eye of the hurricane for his management and his decisions, only in July 2021, when the President of the Government undertook the profound remodeling of the Government there were signs that he could leave. He did not do it – in the PSOE they believe that because Sánchez did not find the substitute – and neither will he do it in the imminent government crisis, which will only affect the ministers Reyes Maroto and Carolina Darias, candidates in Madrid and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, respectively, on 28-M.

It is not that the departure of Gámez, in full scandal for the Cuarteles case or the Mediator case, is a shield for Marlaska and shields him, because Sánchez did not contemplate his departure now, but it does allow him that in the middle of these serious and uncomfortable matters the exit of a weighty, important position, occurs. as the director of the Civil Guard. Because the truth is that these are issues that splash the minister fully by the decisions, in this case inactions, of his department.

It should be remembered that far from solving the problem he has in a nuclear part of the Civil Guard with the Barracks case – the alleged ghost works in 13 commanderies of Spain executed by a businessman linked to the Mediator case – the Minister of the Interior stopped the investigation of magistrate Isabel Durantez that investigates if there are indications of corruption. The judge needed an expert opinion to determine if these works were done or, on the contrary, never carried out. And in January 2022 he asked for help from the Interior. He requested an expert. Given the silence of Marlaska's department, in February he again requested this professional without whom the cause cannot move forward.

Two months after this request, on April 5, the General Subdirectorate of Planning, under the ministry, informed the court, through an email, of the appointment of an expert architect. On the 11th she was appointed by the magistrate and on April 26 she appeared and accepted the position. On June 9, 2022, the General Subdirectorate of Planning, via e-mail, informed the court that the expert was resigning. Textually it said: "Once the documentation has been studied, the magnitude of the expertise to be carried out has been recorded, which is absolutely incompatible with the responsibilities assigned to this Subdirectorate".

On November 3 of last year, the magistrate through an order again requested the Ministry of the Interior. He urged him to appoint -before the resignation of the expert in June- other architects of both the central and peripheral services to carry out the expert. Since the withdrawal of the first architect, five months had passed in which the Ministry had not pronounced despite knowing the need for the instructor to carry out an expert's report.

Complicated moment in the Civil Guard

Given the inaction of the ministry, the judge went to the Treasury in search of the expertise that would allow her to unblock what is possibly the most delicate case facing the Armed Institute since the Roldán era.

In addition, the instructor, the Prosecutor's Office and the State Attorney protested the permissiveness of the Ministry of the Interior in the face of the resignation of the architect. The Cuarteles case remains deadlocked waiting for the Ministry of Finance to appoint an expert due to the non-receipt of its request by Grande-Marlaska.

Case Cuarteles, case Mediator and, to these two causes that splash the Civil Guard, the Staple case is added, reports Efe, in which a Madrid court investigates a score of people, physical and legal, for alleged rigging in contracts related to uniforms of the body.

However, yesterday Gámez limited her decision to the summons of her husband in "a judicial procedure" and described her decision as "difficult", but assured that she did it to protect her family and the Civil Guard. Marlaska, who appeared later, said he had no doubt about the "honorability" of Gámez and defined his resignation as "unfair but necessary", "exemplary in democracy".

The departure of Gámez, indicated as Marlaska since the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos for not informing about the investigation of the 8-M case, caused surprise in the Benemérita.

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  • Civil Guard
  • Ministry of the Interior