Ábalos saved Claudia Montes in his phone as "Crazy Asturias"

Ábalos saved the alleged ADIF crony in his phone as "Crazy Asturias"

The leaked conversation between former Spanish minister José Luis Ábalos and current minister Óscar Puente has a name at its centre: Claudia Montes, ex-Miss Asturias 1989, who is linked to a post at ADIF (Spain's public rail infrastructure company) and described in the messages with a phrase that has already become a label for the whole parliamentary term. "She's nuts," Ábalos wrote. And in his phone contacts he had her saved as Crazy Asturias. The episode, aired on shows like Código 10 on Cuatro, has stopped being corridor gossip and become a textbook case of how public jobs are handed out.

What began as screenshot-driven tittle-tattle turned into a matter with three layers: the alleged crony appointment at a public company, the exchange between two ministers about a third person, and the suspicion that the lawyer assisting the ex-beauty queen is the same one representing Nacho Cano's accuser. Each layer has its own logic, and none of them is edifying.

Who is Claudia Montes and why is she at ADIF

Claudia Montes was Miss Asturias in 1989. From there to an office at ADIF is a stretch that nobody has explained with documents. The leaked conversation places her within the Transport Ministry's web of appointments, and Ábalos himself mentions her to Puente with the familiarity of someone discussing a household problem. She is not a stranger: she is a person with a name, a position and an old beauty pageant photo that these days circulates more widely than her file.

The phone detail —saved as Crazy Asturias— runs deeper than it seems. A minister who files a subordinate under a derogatory nickname in his contacts is not describing a management problem: he is leaving a record of how he treats the people he places. The private joke becomes public evidence.

The conversation with Óscar Puente and the Mouliaá lawyer

According to the leaked messages, Montes also spoke with Óscar Puente on Instagram. In other words, the relationship was not limited to an office: there was a direct, informal and opaque channel between a public employee and a sitting minister. That this is normal in the Spanish administration is precisely the problem.

The other thread pulling at the case is the lawyer. The same counsel assisting Montes appears linked to the defence of Elisa Mouliaá, Nacho Cano's accuser, and to other cases with women at the centre. Some see a pattern of a specialised law firm; others see a coincidence aligned far too neatly. With no court ruling in sight, the connection remains just that: a coincidence that feeds suspicion and that nobody has refuted with facts.

From the joke to the institutional problem

The case has served for something more than filling TV afternoons. It has exposed a mechanism that works without friction: someone is placed by affinity, given a post at a public company and, when it blows up, is described in private as a personality problem. The joke about the nutcase is the tip of the iceberg of a culture where jobs are inherited through closeness and merit is a decoration.

The question still hanging in the air is not who leaked the messages. It is how many more names sit in ministerial contacts under similar nicknames, and how many posts at ADIF, Renfe or any other public body were handed out on the same basis of friendliness. Until there is an audit of appointments, the Montes case will be a summer scandal with an expiry date.

The prediction, with reservations: the affair will fizzle out without disciplinary consequences, like so many others, and in a year's time nobody will remember the nickname. But the next leak will find fertile ground.