Q&A: Spain's opposition
tells PM to go
Spanish
opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba has called on PM Mariano Rajoy to
resign amid corruption allegations.
What are the allegations?
BBC
The central
claim is that documents published by El Pais newspaper are a list of undeclared
or secret cash payments linked to senior members of Spain's ruling Popular
Party (PP).
El Pais is
adamant that these documents were written by the party's former treasurer, Luis
Barcenas.
The PP says the
documents, and anything that can be inferred from them, are false.
What do the documents say?
The hand-written
documents, marked with dates from 1990 to 2008, contain a series of columns.
The names of senior members of the Popular Party often appear in a left-hand
column. In another column, marked as "have" or "out", appear
numbers.
Private
companies and businessmen are also mentioned in the documents. Alongside these
names, in another column marked "owed" or "in", there are
also often large numbers.
El Pais claims
that these numbers were "donations!", and that 70% of them would not
have fallen within Spain's party financing laws at the time.
The law stated
that a private donor could not give more than 60,000 euros to a political party
in a single year, and the money could not come from a company carrying out work
commissioned by the Spanish state.
El Pais
describes the documents as the Popular Party's "hidden accounts".
What do the
documents NOT say?
If the documents
are genuine, they still do not prove that all the people or companies mentioned
actually received or made any of the alleged payments.
It is also
possible that if payments were made, that they could have been declared.
Who is Luis Barcenas?
Luis Barcenas is
a former senator, and was the treasurer of the Popular Party from 1990 to 2009.
He stepped down
from the post, after being implicated in a separate, high-profile corruption
case in Spain, known as the Gurtel scandal.
In that case, he
stands accused of tax fraud and receiving illegal payments.
As part of an
ongoing investigation into the Gurtel case, it emerged last month that Mr
Barcenas had previously held a bank account in Switzerland containing 22
million euros.
The Popular
Party has denied that the account is in any way linked to the party.
Mr Barcenas also
denies he has done anything wrong.
Is Spain's Prime Minister involved?
Mariano Rajoy's
name is written a number of times in the documents published by El Pais.
Alongside his
name are numbers totalling 25,200 for each year, from 1999 to 2008, the dates
to which the documents apparently correspond.
Two days after
the documents were published, the prime minister publicly denied ever having
received any secret payments. He said the allegations against him and his party
were false.
Is this case unique?
People in Spain
are used to corruption cases against politicians being reported in the media,
and sometimes going to court.
However this is
the first time that so many current and former leaders of the governing party,
including the prime minister, have been linked to such a high-profile case.
How damaging could this case be?
Even journalists
in Spain's right-wing newspapers who back the Popular Party believe that the
scandal, so far, has already damaged the image of the prime minister and his
party.
There were
relatively small, but angry protests outside the party's headquarters in Madrid
after El Pais published the documents.
The problem for
Mariano Rajoy is that this scandal chimes with a widely held perception amongst
people in Spain, that politics can often be dirty, because of the number of
corruption cases investigated in the past and present.
The prime
minister reminded voters in his address that he did not go into politics for
the money.
However, the
scandal has been covered so widely in the Spanish media that some damage has
already been done.
What happens next?
The Popular
Party has said it will take legal action against those responsible for what it
says is a smear campaign.
Meanwhile,
Spain's chief state prosecutor has also said that there could be enough
evidence to investigate the allegations against the PP, to see if anything
illegal has taken place.
The Popular
Party has announced an internal audit of its finances and the prime minister
has said he will publish his earnings online.
While the leader
of Spain's main opposition party, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, has called for the
prime minister to resign, as things stand that looks unlikely.