The Operation Kitchen

In 2013, while Luis Bárcenas, the former treasurer of the ruling Partido Popular, was in pre-trial detention, the Interior Ministry under Mariano Rajoy’s government allegedly launched a parapolice operation to spy on his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, and his close circle. The goal, according to prosecutors, was to seize documents and recordings that could compromise the party and its leaders. Over a dozen police officers testified during the trial that they carried out surveillance on orders from superiors, including installing a video camera outside Bárcenas’s lawyer’s office. The operation’s existence was acknowledged even by the defendants.

“A service had to be set up.”

The driver Sergio Ríos was recruited as a confidant in the summer of 2013, given the codename “cocinero” (cook), which gave the operation its name: Kitchen. He was paid 48,000 euros from reserved funds. Surveillance continued until October 2013, when Iglesias detected the team, according to the head of the special surveillance unit.

The Trial

The trial opened on 6 April 2026 at the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid, presided over by Judge Teresa Palacios. Over 37 sessions and nearly four months, the court heard from more than 100 witnesses, including former prime minister Mariano Rajoy. Prosecutors presented police logs with photographs and testimony from agents who followed Bárcenas’s family. The prosecution argued that the operation was ordered from the top of the Interior Ministry to obstruct the investigation into the PP’s alleged slush fund.

Charges and Defendants

Eight people sat in the dock. Former interior minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, his former secretary of state for security Francisco Martínez, and former deputy operational director of the National Police Eugenio Pino each face 15 years in prison if convicted. Former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, already embroiled in other cases, faces the heaviest request: 19 years. Sergio Ríos, the driver, faces 12 and a half years. The other defendants include former internal affairs chief Marcelino Martín Blas, former UDEF head José Luis Olivera, and police officer Andrés Gómez Gordo.

Jorge Fernández Díaz15

Francisco Martínez15

Eugenio Pino15

José Villarejo19

Sergio Ríos12.5

Jorge Fernández Díaz

15 years

Francisco Martínez

15 years

Eugenio Pino

15 years

José Villarejo

19 years

Sergio Ríos

12.5 years

Data from the article text

Final Statements

At the final session on 28 July, only three of the eight defendants exercised their right to the last word. Fernández Díaz, Martínez, and Pino remained silent. Villarejo, who turns 75 next week, questioned how he ended up “stepping on such important toes” but expressed “absolute confidence in judicial independence.” He downplayed his notebooks, calling them temporary memory aids, and apologized.

“I deeply regret the harm I may have caused to all those who have been implicated.”

Sergio Ríos insisted he never knew the operation was illegal. “I have always believed that this was a totally lawful operation,” he said, adding that he had been followed and his phones cloned. Andrés Gómez Gordo denied any role in planning the operation, saying that calling Ríos “coci” in 2015 did not imply knowledge of illegality.

What’s Next

The three-judge panel will now deliberate. No date has been set for the verdict, and the sentence could take months. The case has already cast a long shadow over the Rajoy era and the PP, and the eventual ruling will determine whether the former interior leadership is held criminally responsible for the alleged parapolice plot.