Two PSOE workers have directly placed Santos Cerdán behind the paid trips and access to the Ferraz parking lot granted to Leire Díez. Celia Rodríguez and Covadonga San Pedro testified this Tuesday as witnesses before Judge Santiago Pedraz and assured that they acted following the instructions of the then socialist Organization Secretary.
The employees explained that they looked for tickets, managed the travel, and sent them to Díez after receiving authorization from Cerdán. The PSOE assumed the cost through the agency it usually worked with, although the former socialist leader never communicated the reason for those trips.
The treatment was exceptional within the usual functioning of Ferraz. Leire Díez had no position in the Executive, and this type of management was normally reserved for party leaders. Cerdán gave his approval, and the workers complied with the order without asking for explanations about the destination or purpose of the trips.
Their statement introduces a relevant element in the 'Leire case'. Ferraz presented Díez as a "mere militant" when her meetings with prosecutors, businessmen, and civil guards began to be known. The testimony given before Pedraz describes a much closer operational relationship with the Organization Secretariat led by Cerdán.
More than a dozen accesses to the Ferraz parking lot
The workers have also confirmed that Leire Díez used the parking lot of the socialist headquarters on more than a dozen occasions. The former militant sent a message to communicate that she was going to attend and then received the necessary authorization to enter with her vehicle.
Díez sometimes used the garage to leave her car there while moving around Madrid. Some of these accesses ended in meetings inside Ferraz and others were limited to the use of the parking lot, according to the account provided by the two witnesses.
The ease granted to Díez contrasts with her lack of organic responsibilities. Rodríguez and San Pedro have acknowledged that allowing access and managing trips for someone outside the Executive was outside the usual practices of the party, but have insisted that the orders came from Cerdán.
The former socialist number three decided which expenses could be charged to the PSOE and who received certain services from the organization. The witnesses attribute all responsibility for these authorizations to him and assure that they merely executed the instructions they received as employees of his department.
Meetings that never appeared on the agenda
Rodríguez and San Pedro have also placed in Ferraz three or four meetings between Cerdán, Leire Díez, the businessman Javier Pérez Dolset and Juan Manuel Serrano, former chief of staff of Pedro Sánchez and former president of Correos. All of them are being investigated in the National Court procedure.
The meetings were held without being registered in the official agenda of the then Secretary of Organization. The two employees were precisely in charge of managing that agenda and have declared that they never included those appointments, because they could be held without going through the ordinary organization system.
Their testimony only includes the meetings of which they had direct knowledge. The Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard has documented a greater number of meetings and contacts within its investigation. The difference must be clarified with access records, intercepted messages and the rest of the material incorporated into the case.
Leire Díez maintained intense activity during those months around people related to investigations affecting the PSOE and the Government. The case examines her contacts with prosecutors, lawyers, businessmen and members of the Civil Guard, as well as attempts to obtain compromising information about UCO investigators and heads of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.
The employees were unaware of the purpose of the procedures
Celia Rodríguez and Covadonga San Pedro were initially investigated for their participation in the organization of trips, meetings and accesses. Pedraz ended up withdrawing that condition from them after concluding that he lacked sufficient evidence to sustain that they knew the possible criminal purpose of the procedures carried out.
The magistrate has now questioned them as witnesses, a condition that obliges them to tell the truth. Both have also disassociated themselves from the contracts and payments made from Ferraz to lawyers Jacobo Teijelo and Ismael Oliver, linked by investigators to the alleged plot.
The employees have stated that they never took care of paying invoices or formalizing contracts with those lawyers. Nor have they received instructions from the current PSOE manager, Ana María Fuentes, according to their statement. All orders related to Leire Díez's tickets and accesses came from Santos Cerdán.
The status of witnesses leaves Rodríguez and San Pedro out of the investigated core, but turns their account into an important piece to reconstruct how Ferraz's resources were used. Pedraz seeks to determine who gave the instructions and how far each person's knowledge of the activities attributed to Díez went.
The UCO clones the phones of the two witnesses
After the statements were completed, agents of the Central Operative Unit proceeded to clone the mobile phones of Celia Rodríguez and Covadonga San Pedro with their authorization. The devices had been seized during the request made by the Civil Guard at the socialist headquarters on May 27.
The judge had requested communications maintained between April 2024 and June 2025 with Leire Díez, Santos Cerdán, Juan Manuel Serrano and the socialist manager Ana María Fuentes. The analysis will include messages exchanged via WhatsApp, email and any other channel used during that period.
This material will allow verifying the orders received, the trips contracted, the requests for access to the parking lot and the meetings organized from the Organization Secretariat. Investigators will now be able to contrast the workers' statements with the conversations preserved on their phones.
The Ferraz structure under investigation
Pedraz is investigating an alleged plot created to obstruct judicial procedures related to the PSOE, the Government and Pedro Sánchez's circle. The UCO places Santos Cerdán as the alleged leader of the structure and Leire Díez as the coordinator of the actions developed to obtain information about judges, prosecutors and civil guards.
The case simultaneously examines possible irregularities in public contracts and payments made to people linked to the network. Investigators maintain that Cerdán may have made human and material resources of the PSOE available for Díez's activities, a suspicion that now finds support in the account of the two workers.
Cerdán and Díez have denied having directed an operation against Justice. Tuesday's statements confirm, at least, that the former Organization Secretary personally authorized trips paid for by the PSOE, facilitated the repeated use of the Ferraz parking lot, and held meetings with the former member outside his official agenda.
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