Spain's top court jails former minister Ábalos in corruption case

Spain’s Supreme Court handed José Luis Ábalos 24 years and three months in prison, turning a corruption conviction into a direct test of Pedro Sánchez’s authority. The ruling landed as the first major verdict in the Koldo case and immediately sharpened the political threat around the Socialist-led government.

The court convicted Ábalos of criminal organization, bribery, embezzlement and influence peddling after 14 hearings and testimony from more than 70 witnesses. At the center of the case was a public contract for 13 million face masks, part of Spain’s pandemic-era scramble for medical supplies. The court also sentenced Ábalos’ former aide, Koldo García, to 19 years and eight months, while businessman Víctor de Aldama received a suspended sentence of four years and six months after cooperating with investigators.

The judgment reaches far beyond one former minister. Ábalos, once a senior Socialist figure and a former minister in Sánchez’s government, had already been dismissed from the cabinet in July 2021. He later resigned from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party but kept his parliamentary seat, leaving a long-running political wound inside the party rather than a clean break from it.

That wound now threatens to spread. The verdict is being treated in Madrid as the opening act in a broader reckoning for the Socialists, not simply as the end of one criminal case. Sánchez’s minority government depends on parliamentary backing from Catalan and Basque separatist parties, and every new corruption headline makes that support harder to manage. The People’s Party and Vox have renewed calls for Sánchez to resign and call early elections, while senior Socialist figures have faced growing pressure to close ranks.

The court said the scheme involved a criminal organization and alleged rigging of public contracts for medical supplies. Prosecutors also said it included a monthly €10,000 payment for Ábalos’ fixed expenses. The ruling is expected to shape related investigations, including alleged rigging of public works contracts and alleged cash payments to the PSOE, widening the risk from one mask contract into a party-wide credibility crisis.

The fallout has been amplified by other cases around Sánchez’s political orbit, including the order for his wife, Begoña Gómez, to stand trial and surrender her passport. With additional inquiries touching figures such as David Sánchez and Santos Cerdán, the conviction of Ábalos has become less a closed chapter than a pressure point on a government already fighting to preserve trust, discipline and a workable majority.