Pepe Blanco's lobbying firm puts PP and PSOE under one roof

Pepe Blanco's lobby, or how the PP and PSOE share an office

What is Alfonso Alonso, former president of the Basque PP, doing joining the consultancy of José Blanco, former deputy leader of Spain's PSOE and one of Zapatero's trusted men? The short answer is the revolving door, with the bill picked up by taxpayers. The long one runs through the Koldo case, the Huawei contract and the inquiries the UCO (Spain's Civil Guard investigative unit) keeps open. It is worth stressing from the first line: no one here has been convicted, and everything that trinc is published reporting and ongoing investigations.

A hire that erases the line between PP and PSOE

Alonso's landing in Blanco's structure is not a payroll anecdote. According to the reports published, the UCO has reportedly focused on a consultancy network in which former ministers from the PP and the PSOE coexist. In other words: the same table, two logos and a single business, selling contacts.

The profile published of his circle describes a rugged, cunning operator, able to float like a cork through every crisis. The metaphor comes from the journalistic material itself, not from us. It fits.

Koldo, Huawei and the names appearing before the judge

There lies the uncomfortable core. José Luis Ábalos maintains that it was Blanco who recommended senior officials for the Ministry who are now charged in the Koldo case, according to the press. Santos Cerdán reportedly confirmed before the judge that the so-called "man of Zapatero" mediated in appointments linked to the scheme. The US investigation into the Huawei contract points, in the published version, to the lobbies of Zapatero and Blanco. And in the interview with Víctor Ábalos there is a phrase that explains the rest: his father was a problem for the lobby's billing and the minister had to be changed.

None of those pieces is a verdict. They are pieces.

Blue PSOE: the diagnosis that unsettles both sides

The most repeated reading fits in two words: blue PSOE. It is not a bar-room slogan, it is a thesis about how elites recycle themselves when the colour of the government changes but the surnames of the intermediaries do not. Against it: that without a court ruling there is no case, and that the drip-feed of leaks serves its own political function.

With this track record, the truly newsworthy thing would be a career move that did not end in a consultancy.