The entrance of Santos Cerdán in the prison of Soto del Real has become the last chapter of the series of politicians of the highest level who enter provisional prison by order of a judge in a case for corruption. The name of the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE adds to that of ministers such as Eduardo Zaplana, high positions such as Rafael Vera or autonomous politicians such as Francisco Granados or Ignacio González who spent time between bars while the investigation against them was underway. The magistrate who investigates the Koldo case understands that Cerdán, already without political or organic positions within the party, could destroy evidence on the plot of rigged contracts and commissions in which he shares imputation with José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García.
The great causes of corruption of the last decade have been accompanied, in many cases, of large police operations with dozens of detainees. The judicial filter, traditionally at the National Court or the Supreme Court, applies very specific criteria to decide who has to start the investigation between bars: if there is a risk of running or destroying evidence. In the case of Cerdán, Judge Leopoldo Puente intuits that the “booty” of the plot had to be much higher than the one that has detected the central operational unit (UCO) and there is a real danger, alleges, that the former deputy can destroy the potential evidence.
Santos Cerdán held the most important position someone can have within a political party below the Secretary General. It was the PSOE organization secretary between 2021 and 2025. But it is not the only high position sent to provisional prison during an investigation. The preventive prisoner with the highest political rank remains, today, Eduardo Zaplana. Minister of Labor and spokesman for the government of José María Aznar in his last legislature, Zaplana spent eight and a half months in the Picassent prison after the outbreak of the Window case. He left the prison before the trial and after the magistrates understood that he should remain free to receive treatment against the cancer he suffers.
Zaplana, also expressing the Generalitat Valenciana, spent 259 days in prison between 2018 and 2019 in an erial case that has ended, waiting for a pronouncement of the Supreme, in a sentence for him: ten years in prison and a fine of 25 million euros per charge commissions in a process of privatization of the ITV. The political earthquake due to its provisional prison entry was of an intensity much lower than that caused by the imprisonment of Cerdán. He was arrested a few days after the tenth anniversary of his departure from politics to sign by Telefónica.
Many high positions of governments linked especially to the PP have entered prison, but after being convicted, in the first or in second instance. At the administration level, other background prior to Zaplana date back to the 90s, when Rafael Vera spent several months the prison of Alcalá de Henares for his involvement in the case of state terrorism of the anti -terrorist groups of liberation (GAL) and the kidnapping of second marey. The former Secretary of Security State with Felipe González was almost five months between bars between February and July 1995, where he left after paying a bail of 200 million pesetas.
The Supreme Court ended up confirming sentences for Vera that added more than 17 years in prison for their relationship with kidnapping and also with the use of funds reserved to pay two Gal police. The government of José María Aznar limited his stay in prison for the first case cross an important part of his conviction and ended up entering In Segovia prison in 2005 To fulfill your second sentence.
The provisional prison bar has also sometimes reached the parliamentary level that Santos Cerdán also occupied until a few days before being imprisoned. Luis Bárcenas, known and convicted of his activity as a treasurer of the Popular Party and manager of the 'Box B' of the formation, raffled the provisional prison when he was a senator, the Gürtel case broke out and Judge Antonio Pedreira understood, after two years of imputation, which There was no evidence against him. His luck changed two years later, when the country published its parallel accounting, which collected the black money and outputs of black money from Genoa 13, and Judge Pablo Ruz of the National Court decided to send Soto del Real in the summer of 2013.
Bárcenas spent 19 months in provisional prison until he left in 2015 armed with his most lapidary phrase: “Luis has been really strong.” He then started for him a trail of criminal sanctions for corruption, tax fraud and the payment of the reform of the PP headquarters in black money that returned him to prison although this time to serve a sentence. He was on probation in December last year, more than a decade after his first prison income.
The payroll of politicians imprisoned in a preventive way due to corruption related causes is extended descending to the autonomous level. Ignacio González, former president of the Community of Madrid, was almost seven months in prison as leader of Operation Lezo. A cause for which, eight years later, the wait for corruption in the construction of a golf course or receives a commission of 1.8 million is still prosecuted when it was in charge of the Isabel II channel.
Francisco Granados, former senator, but above all strong man of Esperanza Aguirre in the Community of Madrid, spent two and a half years in preventive detention due to a Punic plot whose main pieces are also pending judgment more than a decade after the start of the operation. Years earlier, Macià Alavedra and Lluís Prenfeta, the first Minister and the second Secretary General of the Presidency with Jordi Pujol, spent more than a month in provisional prison in the case of urban corruption 'Pretoria' for which they were finally sentenced to almost two years in prison after recognizing that they charged commissions.
From the ministers of Aznar to the process
The list of politicians who have passed through the prison grows drastically when analyzing those who have been imprisoned after being convicted, all avoiding the prison when the investigation was still underway. At the national level, many of them members of the PP and José María Aznar cabinets. Rodrigo Rato, one of the strong men of the governments of the Popular Party and considered an architect of the 'Spanish economic miracle', was arrested in 2015 during the records of his home and his office, but was never sent to provisional prison.
The former government president did not go through the provisional prison, but he did have to comply with a conviction for the use of the 'Black' Caja Madrid and Bankia cards and is about to see if he has to do it again if the courts declare his second sentence of almost five years in jail firm for hiding his fortune to the Treasury.
Jaume Matas, minister with José María Aznar and also president of the Balearic Islands for the PP, also chose to start agreeing with his sentences with the Prosecutor's Office before the threat of judicial causes that led him to jail without before having passed through provisional prison. From his first sentence in 2012 to pay with public money to a journalist who wrote his speeches to the Macro Palma Arena Caso and two and a half years between bars.
The case of the GAL and the dirty war against ETA not only took Rafael Vera to prison. Former Socialist Internal Minister José Barrionuevo was not provisionally imprisoned, but he did enter the 10 years in jail that were imposed on him for his role in the kidnapping of Second Marey. Vera is not the only Secretary of State for Security that has passed through the prison in a preventive way: Francisco Martínez, prosecuted in Operation Kitchen, was less than a week in prison for his alleged involvement in the 'Operation Borraska' on the activity of Hacker Alcasec.
Not all politicians who have been preventive or convicted prisoners have been imprisoned for crimes related to causes of political corruption. The organic position of a party with more category within its formation that has spent time between bars is Oriol Junqueras, ERC leader who was around two years in preventive detention for the procés. Since Judge Carmen Lamela, from the National Court, decided to send to this politician and several members of the deposed Government of Carles Puigdemont in 2017 until the Supreme Court signed his 13 -year prison sentence and his imprisonment ceased to be preventive.
Together with Junqueras, several Catalan politicians who held public or party charges in the Government such as Consellers or ERC and Junts spent months or even years in provisional prison. In his case, both Lamela and Pablo Llarena subsequently in the Supreme Court cemented their decision to keep them between bars at the risk of escaping or even that they continued with the sovereign challenge if they were released.
Arnaldo Otegi, leader of EH Bildu, also spent time in provisional imprisonment by order of the National Court. He entered in October 2009 for the Batragune case, the cause in which the European courts determined that he had not had a fair trial. Previously, he had also gone through provisional prison for participating, within the terrorist band ETA, in the kidnapping of the director of the Michelin factory in Vitoria, Luis Abaitua, in 1979. He was a preventive imprisonment from 1987 until he was sentenced in 1989.
