The 2021 Pegasus compromise of Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez demands immediate disclosure by the State of Israel. Moroccan intelligence infected his device twice in May 2021 and compromised Defense Minister Margarita Robles the following month. More than 200 Spanish numbers were targeted during the Western Sahara standoff that year. Jerusalem retains oversight of the NSO Group and therefore possesses the technical indicators. With Sánchez’s government collapsing under documented corruption that has reached the prime ministerial level, Jerusalem should release the relevant intelligence.
On May 27, 2026, Spain’s Civil Guard units raided the national headquarters of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in Madrid. Officers searched for records of illegal financing, bribery, and efforts to sabotage active court cases. This was the latest in a relentless series of police actions against the ruling party. Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, now faces formal charges of embezzlement, influence peddling, and misuse of public funds after allegedly diverting state university resources and steering contracts to allies. Sánchez’s brother David Sánchez reportedly peddled influence for a senior public post.
Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, now faces formal charges of embezzlement, influence peddling, and misuse of public funds.
Former Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos and aide Koldo García also face trial over kickbacks from coronavirus mask contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Businessman Víctor de Aldama testified under oath before the National Supreme Court that Sánchez personally thanked him at a 2019 rally for conducting illegal international activities on the government’s behalf. Aldama identified Sánchez as the main figure of a state-parallel, mafia-like scheme “operating from La Moncloa,” the official residence of Spain’s prime minister.
On May 19, 2026, Spain’s National Court indicted Sánchez’s mentor and former prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, for directing a criminal network of influence peddling, money laundering, and forgery tied to the $62 million taxpayer bailout of the Venezuela-linked airline Plus Ultra. Zapatero allegedly routed roughly $2 million through shell companies in Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Panama.
U.S. investigators traced the funds to Petróleos de Venezuela and its corrupt distribution networks. Defector and former Venezuelan military intelligence chief Hugo Carvajal testified that former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro granted Zapatero a gold mine concession in the Orinoco Mining Arc. Zapatero had earlier approved $1.7 billion in arms sales to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela and—like Sánchez—transferred dual-use technology to Iran. Sánchez continues to extend full political support to his predecessor.
This pattern of elite enrichment coincides with a deeper strategic vulnerability. Emerging court records from the Zapatero case show that laundered funds from the Plus Ultra bailout moved through entities tied to Venezuelan gold smuggling corridors that Iranian-aligned networks have exploited to finance operations across the Sahel and into the Mediterranean. Spanish authorities have minimized these links, yet they directly erode the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s southern flank security by sustaining illicit flows that bypass European Union sanctions and feed proxy networks operating near Spanish territory. The corruption has also paralyzed the modernization of Spain’s foreign intelligence service, creating gaps in joint counter-smuggling efforts with Morocco and Israel that Iranian-backed facilitators have quietly exploited through Spanish ports and migration routes.
The corruption has also paralyzed the modernization of Spain’s foreign intelligence service, creating gaps in joint counter-smuggling efforts with Morocco and Israel.
The 2021 Pegasus breach occurred exactly as Sánchez negotiated migration and economic concessions with Morocco and Algeria—and precisely as he prepared the sudden policy reversal that delivered Western Sahara to Rabat. Sánchez’s own emissaries flew to Tel Aviv that May demanding full details of the extracted material. Israel and the NSO Group replied that they held only technical indicators, not the content itself, although recent evidence proved the opposite. Sánchez expressed clear irritation because his intelligence services informed him that this was not true. Indeed, this might explain why, since then, Sánchez has joined the pro-Palestinian false “genocide” narrative and even threatened Israel with nuclear weapons if he had them.
Consequently, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should release and share the complete technical record immediately with the Supreme Court prosecutors handling the prosecutions. This step would equip Spanish judicial authorities with evidence to assess foreign influence in decisions that damaged the security interests of Israel and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners. Coordination with Morocco on a joint technical summary would reinforce the defensive character of the 2021 operation and highlight the risks posed by compromised leadership inside a key European Union member state.
Israel can and must further condition progress under the European Union-Israel Association Agreement—which sustains more than $49 billion in annual two-way trade—on Spain’s reversal of policies hostile to Israeli security and concrete steps to purge the corruption now documented at the highest levels of government. Sánchez is still pushing for the termination of that agreement without serious strategic punishment. A redacted public release of key technical findings would alert European Union capitals that a prime minister facing multiple indictments and a second police raid on his party headquarters in recent months cannot credibly anchor the southern flank against Iranian power projection along the Strait of Gibraltar.
