Sánchez found out about Begoña Gómez's trial while on a plane to New York: the case's major milestones coincide with the president's trips abroad

Once again, a highly significant decision by Judge Peinado in the Begoña Gómez case arrives just as President Pedro Sánchez is beginning an important trip, this time to the UN summit in New York. It has become almost a running joke at La Moncloa. On this occasion, Sánchez is not travelling to New York with his wife, but on other occasions she was with him on those trips marked by Peinado's decisions, making the impact even greater.

The president received the news while already aboard the official aircraft flying to New York. At La Moncloa, they look back and recall that there has barely been a single major trip without a significant piece of news about the Begoña Gómez case — something the government does not consider coincidental, although on this occasion it was more justified given that the magistrate wants to wrap everything up before he retires.

Sánchez's last major trip was completely overshadowed by Peinado's decisions. It was the NATO summit in Ankara in July of this year. It was a key event for the Spanish president, who was in the midst of a battle with Donald Trump over Sánchez's refusal to commit to raising defence spending to 5% of GDP. The US leader went so far as to suggest that Spain should be removed from NATO. In Ankara, he even said that Spaniards are "bad people" and called for all trade relations with Spain to be severed, although he later backed down and the matter came to nothing. Yet the focus shifted to Peinado's decision to confiscate Gómez's passport, which ultimately prevented her from travelling. Upon arrival, two bouquets of flowers were waiting at the foot of the plane's steps — one for Sánchez and one for Gómez — but a visibly irritated president had to explain to the organisers that his wife had been unable to travel due to a restriction imposed by a judge who had gone so far as to suggest she might flee with police assistance, something unheard of among international leaders.

Peinado has also made his presence felt on the few trips in which Begoña Gómez did participate, which were marked by decisions affecting her. Earlier this year, during the president's fourth trip to China — where he has forged a strong political relationship with the Beijing regime — his wife accompanied him, and while they were there, Peinado announced her indictment. Last year, during the trip to New York for the UN summit, Sánchez was met with another piece of news from Peinado: the proposal that she be tried by a jury. At the previous NATO summit in The Hague, came the attempted indictment of Félix Bolaños, which was subsequently rejected by the Provincial Court.

There were two other highly relevant trips involving Gómez in which Peinado made decisions that defined Sánchez's press conferences and complicated the journeys, particularly due to the cost to Spain's international image that such disruptions entail. In 2024, Gómez accompanied Sánchez to India, where they were received with great honors and rode in an open-top car through the streets alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his wife. And it was precisely there that the judge appeared, announcing from Madrid an expansion of the charges against Gómez for new offenses. Shortly before that, during another important trip to Brazil to visit Lula, a key political ally, Peinado announced that an investigation was being opened into Gómez's finances. After an investigation, police concluded there was nothing unusual about those accounts, but the political damage had already been done and the trip was overshadowed by the news. La Moncloa insists it is impossible for this to be coincidental, and considers it unprecedented and extremely serious that a judge would seek to interfere in this way with the president's international image.

"The last service to the homeland before hanging up the robe. What a coincidence, on the eve of an international trip by the president," said Rebeca Torró, organizational secretary of the Socialists, expressing her displeasure. "It is intolerable that, once again, a ruling in this case is served coinciding with an international trip by the President of the Government. As well as the fact that it is made public before being notified to the parties," La Moncloa stated.

Once again, and this time even before landing in New York, a key trip by the president — the last UN summit before the general elections — is marked by the judicial agenda, including the indictment of the daughters of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

The pincer movement between the Ceuta crisis and the courts makes it very difficult for Sánchez and his team to break free from an agenda that has harmed them and kept them blocked for nearly two months. La Moncloa had designed a completely different September, and was hoping to start the season as in 2025, when the massacre in Gaza and Sánchez's clear stance of rejection, joined by other countries precisely at the UN summit when France decided to recognize Palestine, set the tone. But nothing has gone according to plan and La Moncloa has had to delay planned announcements and debates.

This week, Sánchez had intended to move away from the Ceuta agenda that has caused the Government so much damage, in order to broaden the focus and throw himself into the risks of artificial intelligence — one of the flagship issues of this UN summit — as well as the push for multilateralism against Donald Trump's protectionist line. The president has designed an agenda with several events centered on the protection of minors from social media and artificial intelligence, multilateralism, feminism, and the defense of progressive economic policies that combat inequality while simultaneously generating growth and record employment figures, as has been the case in Spain. Additionally, the highlight of the trip will be the meeting with New York's progressive mayor, Zohran Mamdani. But for now, everything has been overshadowed by Peinado's final decision before his retirement.