A Spanish judge on Saturday revoked the passport of Begona Gomez, the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, citing flight risk ahead of her upcoming trial on corruption charges. The ruling requires Gomez to appear in court every 15 days and bars her from leaving the country.
Gomez has been under investigation since 2024 over allegations that she used her position as the wife of the prime minister to obtain work at the Complutense University of Madrid and that she diverted public money for her own private interests. The case is part of a broader set of corruption accusations involving Sanchez’s allies and relatives, including former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
In addition to Gomez, Judge Juan Carlos Peinado ordered her assistant, Cristina Alvarez, and businessman Juan Carlos Barrabes Consul to stand trial. Barrabes is alleged to have benefited from Gomez’s actions.
Allies of Gomez and Sanchez called the ruling unprecedented. “She is innocent,” the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party said in a statement on X. “She has been judicially and politically persecuted for two years. What happened today is just another step, a democratic scandal that doesn’t hold up. They won’t stop.”
Peinado said in his ruling that the alleged conduct was out of place in a democracy. “Behaviors such as these emanating from presidential palaces seem more characteristic of absolutist regimes, thankfully long forgotten in our country,” he said.
A trial date has not been set.