The Provincial Court of Badajoz has convicted David Sánchez Pérez-Castejón, the brother of Spain’s Prime Minister, over his 2017 appointment to a post in the provincial administration. The court sentenced him to nine years of special disqualification from public employment or office and from exercising passive suffrage rights, finding him a necessary cooperator in one offense of administrative prevarication. The judgment concerned the creation and award of a coordinator-of-conservatories position. The court found it lacked a genuine institutional need or substantive duties, and said it served a particular interest rather than the general interest. No prison sentence was imposed.
Miguel Ángel Gallardo, president of the Diputación de Badajoz at the time of the appointment and formerly secretary-general of the PSOE in Extremadura, was convicted as the author of two offenses of administrative prevarication. He received two separate nine-year disqualification penalties, amounting to 18 years in total, including disqualification from public office and passive suffrage. The ruling also imposed a nine-year disqualification on Luis María Carrero, another person linked to the provincial administration’s management.
The convictions are not final and remain subject to appeal. As of October 20, Sánchez’s defense and the Public Prosecutor’s Office were seeking his acquittal, and the case may ultimately be reviewed by Spain’s Supreme Court. A subsequent clarification of the sentence’s reported effect said Sánchez would be barred from holding any public position during the disqualification period. The restriction does not prevent him from working in the private sector. Sánchez had already relinquished his Diputación position.
The ruling has renewed attention to public-sector hiring and the purpose of administrative decisions in Spain. Administrative prevarication concerns the issuance of an unjust administrative decision. In this case, the judgment focused on the circumstances surrounding the creation and award of the post, not simply on the existence of a public-sector job. Pedro Sánchez defended his brother, saying: “He is being convicted for being the brother of the president of the Government.”
The case is part of wider scrutiny of public officials’ conduct in hiring and administrative decisions. Health officials in Catalonia, for example, recently faced trial over alleged discrimination in the Covid-19 vaccination rollout for police forces, as described in this report on the Catalan vaccination trial. The Badajoz judgment puts the legality and purpose of decisions made within the provincial administration at the center of the case. The appeals process will determine whether the convictions stand.
