The director of the Civil Guard arrives at the Senate under pressure for her meetings with Leire Díez: the UCO considers that she was aware of the activities of the ex-militant

The general director of the Civil Guard, Mercedes González, appears this Tuesday before the Interior Committee of the Senate with the 'Leire Díez case' already installed at the center of the political battle. The session, scheduled from 4:00 p.m., comes after the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard has placed its contacts with former socialist militant Leire Díez as a relevant element to determine what knowledge the Civil Guard leadership could have had about the alleged maneuvers attributed to her. González has already admitted several meetings with her, although she maintains that she never participated in any operation against the investigators nor transferred sensitive information.

The opposition's interrogation will point to a very specific chronology. According to the version defended by the general director, Leire Díez presented herself in these contacts as a journalist and it was in the last meeting when she raised the situation of Commander Rubén Villalba, investigated in the 'Koldo case', a request that González assures she immediately rejected. The UCO, however, has incorporated into the summary a later message in which Díez spoke of "continuing to increase that path", a phrase that investigators link to the open relationship with the general director of the Civil Guard.

The UCO will be the political axis of the appearance

The Senate will not only examine whether there were three meetings, but what happened around them. The questions registered by the groups include possible meetings in Civil Guard facilities, measures adopted to protect the UCO from external pressures, reserved information opened due to alleged leaks, and actions carried out by the unit itself in the General Directorate's facilities. The most delicate point for González will be to explain whether these decisions responded to ordinary procedures or if they occurred while the alleged plot was trying to obtain data on agents, prosecutors, and judicial cases linked to the PSOE.

The opposition will also seek to clarify what the Interior Ministry knew and when it knew it. In this regard, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has publicly defended González's honesty and has denied any knowledge of pressure on the UCO, but the latest reports have raised the political cost of that defense. The PP will try to confront the minister's version with the messages attributed to Díez, the subsequent contacts, and the internal warnings about her movements. For the government, the priority will be to encapsulate the appearance in the personal actions of the director general; for the opposition, to turn it into another piece of political responsibility within the Ministry.

González arrives at the Senate with an already rehearsed explanation: meetings without operational content, refusal of the request regarding Villalba, and total absence of interference in judicial investigations. The difficulty is that the appearance occurs after the UCO has put in black and white several indications that the opposition considers sufficient to demand more precise answers. The key will not only be how many times she saw Leire Díez, but whether the director general knew in time what role the former socialist militant was trying to play around the Civil Guard.