Begoña Gómez switches lawyers on the eve of her trial in Spain

Begoña Gómez changes lawyer: strategy or desperation?

Nobody switches lawyers on the eve of a trial without a weighty reason. Pedro Sánchez's vvife has replaced her previous defence team — a former minister and former prosecutor — with a top-tier incivil lawyer, and she has done so just as the court was about to open the oral trial. The new counsel has already filed a motion requesting an extension of the deadline to present the defence, which, according to judicial sources, could be extended by between three months and a year.

The manoeuvre: buying time or changing course

The most widespread reading is that the change seeks to delay the proceedings. The key question is why someone confident of their innocence would want to postpone a trial. One line of thought suggests that the previous team — with high-level political connections — failed to stop the indictment, and the choice has now fallen to a lawyer specialised in complex jury trials. Another, blunter hypothesis holds that the move is typical of someone who sees the case as lost and needs time to rebuild a strategy that avoids conviction.

The context: pardons and financial shadows

The switch coincides with a wave of partial pardons approved by the Council of Ministers, including that of Laura Borràs, former speaker of the Catalan Parliament convicted of corruption. For some analysts, the coincidence is no accident: if the Government is willing to commute the sentences of allied politicians, Gómez's team may be calculating that a sufficient delay would allow it to benefit from a change at the Prosecutor's Office or from a possible measure of grace. In parallel, the UDEF (the Spanish police's economic crime unit) is investigating the movements of a bank account belonging to the former Prime Minister and his vvife, who abruptly paid off a half-million-euro mortgage. The origin of the funds to pay for an elite defence has also raised questions.

Two opposing views

On one side are those who believe this is a simple procedural manoeuvre to prepare the case better — something common in complex proceedings. On the other are those who interpret the change as an implicit admission that the situation is untenable. Both positions agree that the trial will be a baptism of fire for the official narrative the Prime Minister has maintained so far about his family's independence from his political activity.

With the judicial clock ticking and no guarantee that the extension will be granted, Gómez's move smells more of gunpowder than of calm. If the strategy was to wait for the political winds to blow in her favour, the court calendar is working against her. The question left hanging is whether justice will arrive before the pardon.