Eva Cárdenas and the property business dragging Feijóo into the spotlight

Eva Cárdenas and the property business dragging Feijóo into the spotlight

A company created with barely €3,000 and declaring €300,000 in annual profits. That is the figure that has ignited the conversation about Eva Cárdenas, the partner of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and her activity in the property sector. The number, repeated ad nauseam, hides an accounting trap worth dismantling: those €3,000 are the minimum shareholding capital with which virtually all limited companies in Spain are incorporated. It is not a sign of precarious entrepreneurship or opacity. It is the standard amount.

The matter hit the headlines when Cárdenas's entry into the public debate brought the spotlight back onto the financial affairs of politicians' partners. What initially seemed like an attack on the PP over the Begoña Gómez case ended up turning towards Feijóo himself. The underlying question is not new: to what extent is it legitimate for politicians' relatives to do business in a sector as regulated as real estate?

How much does Eva Cárdenas's property firm actually earn?

The company's numbers are not those of an empire. A declared profit of €300,000 a year, with a 5% margin on its activity, according to the data that have been circulated. Some argue that this figure is before taxes and that the real return is even lower. The previous year, moreover, was described as mediocre. We are not looking at a property windfall or a fortune amassed in two afternoons.

Cárdenas's professional career also does not fit the profile of opportunist that some attribute to her. A law graduate, she ran Zara Home for fifteen years, Inditex's first retail venture outside clothing. When she left the company, she received a severance payment as everyone who leaves Inditex voluntarily does. The millions she earned there have nothing to do with Feijóo. That detail, repeated like a mantra on social media, dismantles the theory of express enrichment through politics.

Property as a cross-party investment: from the baker to the MP

Here comes the argument that goes beyond this specific case. The most regulated sector of the Spanish economy, apart from banking, is real estate. And it turns out that many of those with a hand in the regulation have business in property. It cuts across all parties. From the ministry to the MP, from the spokesperson to the councillor. The political class has its own interests, and they do not always coincide with those of the governed.

The anecdote comes from a neighbourhood baker who, as the story goes, lived on an old lease in a penthouse in the Goya area of Madrid. She bought it for next to nothing in the 1980s, when it did not even have a lift, and sold it two years ago for over a million euros. Add to that a couple of chalets in Rivas when they were practically giving them away, other flats in Tres Cantos when it was in the middle of nowhere, and several more in Leganés and Móstoles. Five at a time. Property is not a politicians' vice: it is the only way part of the population has found to make a return on their savings.

Is profiting from housing legal? The debate over consistency

The most uncomfortable point for the left is that of consistency. It is not the same for the partner of a PP politician to own a property company as it is for a Socialist housing spokesperson to argue that "housing is not a business" while her partner makes profits from renting out dozens of flats. The criticism is not of the business itself, but of the discourse. If you preach that rentierism is murderous and then those around you live off it, the problem is one of credibility, not legality.

Some argue that the underlying problem is that in Spain there is no other way to get a good return on an investment. If there were something that yielded more money, no one would invest in housing. We have PLD Space and we do not want to build a SpaceX. The criticism should be aimed at the absence of productive alternatives, not at someone buying a flat with their savings. It is easy to understand.

The Court of Accounts hoax and the legal fine print

It is worth clarifying a detail that has slipped into the conversation: according to a message in the thread, the Tribunal de Cuentas (Spain's Court of Accounts) revised its initial ruling and the Supreme Court found no crime in relation to certain reports about Feijóo's circle. In other words, part of the material circulating as proof of corruption is not. That does not exempt it from scrutiny, but it does require distinguishing between what is a legal business and what is a crime. The line is thin and some cross it without shame.

Greed has no side. It is the most repeated conclusion and the hardest to refute. The problem is not that Feijóo's partner owns a property company, but that the political system as a whole has turned property into everyone's refuge. And meanwhile, the public debate gets tangled up in whether one case is worse than the other.

Should public officials be required to ensure their partners do not operate in sectors they regulate? The question remains on the table.