‘Little Nicolás’ arrested for running out on €500 restaurant bill

Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, better known as “Little Nicolás,” was arrested at a Madrid nightclub in the early hours of Friday morning after reportedly walking out of a restaurant without fully paying the check.

The 20-year-old gained national notoriety in October of last year when he was arrested and charged with forging official documents and passing himself off as both an advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and an agent in Spain’s secret service as part of a supposed scam to fleece a businessman out of €25,000.

The Spanish media published photographs of “Little Nicolás” in the company of many senior Popular Party (PP) officials, including former prime minister José María Aznar.

On this occasion, Gómez Iglesias allegedly refused to pay his €523 share of a bill presented to him by the waiter at Ramsés, a fashionable restaurant in Madrid, where he had dined with 16 other people – including his friend Isabel Mateos, popularly known by her nickname “La Pechotes” (Big Boobs). Both became overnight media sensations following Little Nicolás’s first arrest last year.

After running out of the restaurant, the young man took refuge inside Gabana, a trendy nightclub on Velázquez street, in the city’s upmarket Salamanca district.

The owner of Ramsés called the police, which sent a patrol car to arrest Gómez Iglesias around 2.30am. He was taken to the local police precinct, charged with fraud, and left there for the remainder of the night. He was released at 8am when his lawyer came for him.

Gómez Iglesias told SER radio station that a company was paying for the dinner.

Meanwhile, the owner of Ramsés filed a formal complaint but will not be pursuing legal action as Gómez Iglesias’s friends have told her they will take care of the bill, according to news agency Efe.