Europe | Spain

Dirt all round

|MADRID

IT WAS grim news for Felipe Gonzalez, Spain's former prime minister and still leader of the Socialist party, when 33 Supreme Court judges decided recently to put a pile of secret-service documents into the public domain. Just about all the information in them had already been leaked to the press. But it may well now be used to help prosecute a number of Mr Gonzalez's closest colleagues in the governments that ran Spain for 13 years until last summer, when the conservative People's Party (PP), led by Jose Maria Aznar, took over. The documents may make Mr Gonzalez squirm, too. The odd thing, though, is that the Socialist leader's discomfiture may not much help Mr Aznar. Few people in Spain feel very good about what has been revealed.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Dirt all round”

The weakest link

From the April 5th 1997 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Marine Le Pen (L) arrives at the Paris criminal courthouse for her trial on suspicion of embezzlement of European public funds

Marine Le Pen spooks the bond markets

She threatens to bring down the French government, but also faces a possible ban from politics

Donald Trump shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte as they meet in Palm Beach, Florida, United States, November 22nd 2024

The maths of Europe’s military black hole 

It needs to spend to defend, but voters may balk


Ukraine’s warriors brace for a Kremlin surge in the south 

Vladimir Putin’s war machine is pushing harder and crushing Ukrainian morale


Vladimir Putin fires a new missile to amplify his nuclear threats

The attack on Ukraine is part of a new era of missile warfare

Once dominant, Germany is now desperate

As an election looms its business model is breaking down