A week of legal reckoning for Spain’s two main political groups began on Monday as a former conservative interior minister went on trial for allegedly spying on an ex-party treasurer who threatened to expose corruption.
The case against Jorge Fernández Díaz, who served between 2011 and 2016 under ex-Popular Party (PP) prime minister Mariano Rajoy, comes before another high-profile trial that has further damaged the ruling Socialists and public confidence in Spain’s political class.
Fernandez Diaz and former senior interior ministry officials are accused of a plot to spy on and silence ex-PP treasurer Luis Barcenas, using public money and without any legal basis.
Barcenas, who served as party treasurer until 2009, was taken into pre-trial detention in 2013 for irregularities in PP accounts and had threatened to reveal secrets about illegal party financing because he did not feel sufficiently supported.
In an interview published in El Mundo daily on Saturday, Barcenas said it…
