Camps in the defendant's dock

Francisco Camps, recently reelected regional premier of Valencia, will finally sit in the defendant's dock. On Friday José Flors, the investigating judge in the case of the suits that Camps allegedly received as bribes, decided to accuse the Valencian premier and three of his colleagues, after a preliminary hearing in which the main novelty has been the hypothesis, admitted by defense, that if the politician accepted the suits as a gift it was in his condition as president of the Popular Party (PP) of Valencia and not as head of the regional government. Given the nature of the crime - accepting 12 suits, four jackets and nine other garments paid for by the same Gürtel network that obtained lucrative contracts from his administration - the sentence must be pronounced by a jury.

Camps' determination to seek the verdict of the ballot box to keep hold of his post at the head of the regional government has led to a situation with few precedents in Spain, which may seriously erode voter support for a PP which has never publicly denied its support for him. In this sense, the first reactions to the ruling constitute a very bad sign. It is an insult to the public's intelligence, and to the democratic order, to claim that the votes constitute an acquittal, as the regional government spokesperson Lola Johnson asserted on Friday; and it is a frivolous error to attempt to sidetrack the whole question, as did Valencia Mayor Rita Barberá, by saying that someone wants to oust Camps from politics "while others open the door to [Basque separatist party] Bildu."

The strategy adopted by the accused, meanwhile, is one of confusion. While the judge was weighing up in Valencia, he was in Brussels speaking about the "grave economic situation of Spain," setting the "serious work" of his regional administration against the "national tragedy" of Zapatero's economic management. He does not seem overly equipped with moral authority to speak of such a matter, when he is facing a trial for receiving gifts, "in consideration of his post," from a corruption network that has looted the public coffers of the Valencian region with contracts obtained in exchange for kickbacks, and for the financing of the regional PP's electoral rallies. This is not to mention the alleged pilfering of the public coffers on the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Valencia in 2006, in which the network obtained succulent contracts.

This type of fraudulent practice is what seems to be behind the case of the suits, which the PP has always attempted to downplay as a trifle. The judge's ruling explains that the Gürtel network's aim with these gifts was "that of obtaining the friendship and favor of the persons receiving them." Camps must now answer for a crime of accepting bribes, but meanwhile evidence has emerged of other offenses (illegal party financing, falsification of public documents, misuse of public office and bribery) against nine of his closest confidants and collaborators: which may lead to further embarrassments, not only in the political sense, but in the form of actual criminal charges.