Leire Díez, the alleged plumber of the PSOE, held three meetings with the general director of the Civil Guard, in addition to conversations via mobile phone, with the purpose of sending her information. In addition, he urged the director, Mercedes González, to initiate an “internal investigation” within the armed institute against the UCO. This is stated in one of the body reports incorporated into the summary of the Leire case to which EL PAÍS has had access. When asked by a journalist, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando-Grande Marlaska, denied on May 28 that the two had met: “The director of the Civil Guard has not had any meeting with any person, the one you have indicated, Leire or any other, in terms of any kind.”
The UCO indicates that Leire “would have begun to prepare a ‘way’ through the General Director of the Civil Guard in which his intention to ‘put together what I want to do with the UCO at an administrative level’ or, in his own notes, carry out an ‘Internal GC investigation’ is specified. [Guardia Civil] for leaks.” And he points out that the general director “would have been aware that, on the part of Leire [Díez] and another series of people, a smear campaign against the UCO would be developing.” The Unit maintains that Mercedes González knew about these events “at least” on May 8, 2025.
Government sources assure that González never met with Leire Díez in her capacity as general director of the Civil Guard, and that no investigation was opened within the armed institute based on indications or information that came from Díez.
Judge Santiago Pedraz, who is investigating the case against Díez in the National Court, noted in his order last week that the alleged plot sought to “disturb the normal development of the UCO’s actions,” and that to do so they sought to present complaints against the Unit to the State Attorney General’s Office, in addition to collecting “personal and confidential data and information (secret by Law) of the commanders who intervened in the investigations” against former senior officials of the Government and the PSOE.
But he also pointed out another operation of the alleged plot: “Promote suspicion” about the actions of the UCO “before the general director of the Civil Guard.” A suspicion that could have motivated “the opening of separate confidential information files.” According to the order, the UCO was accused of the possible leak of compromised messages between the former Minister of Transportation José Luis Ábalos and other relevant members of his party, which appeared in the press, despite the fact that the members of the alleged Leire Díez plot knew that they had not left the UCO.
It is to this last point, the conversations with Mercedes González and the decision to open an internal investigation into the UCO, to which the facts of the Civil Guard report refer.
The investigations set the start of communications between Díez and González “at least” on May 9, 2025. Two days later, “a relevant event occurs in the WhatsApp conversation between the two,” states the Civil Guard report. That day, at 9:16 in the morning, the chat they shared recorded a message “compatible with a previous conversation having been deleted and a new one started” and the second “that the general director of the Civil Guard activated the automatic deletion of messages between them.”
The Civil Guard deduces from the facts reported that there was communication between Leire Díez and Mercedes González prior to the appointment of the latter as general director of the armed institute, but that in addition, the existence of “at least three meetings” is confirmed, held on September 30 and December 20, 2024, and on April 2, 2025. González had already held the same position between March and June 2023.
Furthermore, the UCO assures that it has gathered “indications from which it appears that Leire [Díez] would be sending him information obtained within the framework of the supposedly criminal activity that he had been carrying out.” And he concludes that everything “culminates with the set of elements from which it can be deduced that Leire would have intended to start an ‘internal investigation’ within the Civil Guard and directed against its Central Operational Unit, foreseeably using the director herself. [del instituto armado]”.
Thus, the report specifies that between May 9 and 14, 2025, a “reserved information” (internal investigation) was opened within the Civil Guard “directed at the investigators of the Central Operational Union.” The foreseeable object of the same, the report states, was “the clarification of the leaks that could have taken place.”
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, flatly denied on May 28 that Díez and González had met. To express questions from a journalist, the minister responded that “the director of the Civil Guard has not had any meeting with any person, the one you have indicated, Leire or any other, in terms of any kind.” He also denied it on June 25, 2025, in an appearance in Congress, in which Marlaska said that “the Civil Guard denied any conversation about any visit by the person from Leire. [Díez] to the director” of the armed institute.
When consulted about this, the ministry has not yet offered explanations about the information that appears in the summary, reports Juana Viúdez.
The investigations also include conversations between Leire Díez and other people involved in the plot, which would endorse the content of the meetings between the alleged plumber and the senior official of the Civil Guard. Thus, the Civil Guard report states that Leire Díez spoke via WhatsApp with Leticia de la Hoz, Koldo García’s current lawyer. In that conversation, on May 9, 2025, Díez literally stated: “I just had a meal with Mercedes [González] because the leaks come from the UCO.”
The UCO dates back to the beginning of 2025 the beginning of Leire Díez’s actions with respect to the Civil Guard. This is stated in Díez’s comment to another of the accused, Vicente Fernández Guerrero, on February 25, she speaks directly to him about Mercedes González: “I have to check it, but I think that the UCO unit that intervened is the same one that we are investigating. And remember that I have friendship with the DG [directora general] of the GC [Guardia Civil]”.
