One day in May 2017, on a ground floor on Marqués del Riscal Street in Madrid, a 47-year-old man sleeps lying on the floor next to a pile of boxes.
Inside are the signatures of 57,300 PSOE militants who want Pedro Sánchez to be the general secretary of the party, against Susana Díaz and Patxi López.
The man, weighing more than 100 kilos and almost 1.90 tall, has just arrived from Pamplona in an old car, without a suitcase, without a hotel and without asking many questions, to guard them.
“It was a small place, there were only a few chairs,” says the person linked to the PSOE who remembers this anecdote.
Almost none of the 10 people consulted to reconstruct Koldo García's biography in this article, who knew him closely at different stages of his life, want to give his name.
They all agree that “Koldo was willful, hard-working,” and that they do not see him as the mastermind of any plot.
That night in 2017 they only gave him the order not to open the door and not to trust anyone.
And he delivers.
Seven years later, this security guard who loves chopping logs has unleashed a corruption scandal that hits the heart of the party and the Government.
The case affects former minister José Luis Ábalos, the PSOE has lost a deputy, the president of Congress has had to make an official statement and the European prosecutor's office has requested papers and invoices.
The man who helped, in his sphere of influence, to bring Pedro Sánchez to the top has caused a cataclysm whose shock wave is still unknown, the consequences it will reach.
Three dates mark the rise and fall of Koldo García.
One: summer 2011, when he became a councilor for the PSN-PSOE Huarte, a small municipality next to Pamplona.
It is the moment when he stops being an escort, when that job begins to end with the end of ETA and he seeks to relocate.
Two: May 2017, when they called him because the PSOE needed someone trustworthy to guard the endorsements for the primaries in Madrid and Santos Cerdán said that he knows a militant in Pamplona who can help.
That call decides his fate, because he will then make the leap to Madrid to be José Luis Ábalos' assistant.
And three: February 2019, when on a trip to Mexico he meets Víctor de Aldama, the businessman who shortly after, when the pandemic breaks out, will see that he has the right person at hand to give the hit of his life, according to what is noted in the judicial investigation.
Huarte, the beginnings in the PSN (2011)
Born in 1970 in Barakaldo (Bizkaia), Koldo's life is linked to his physique, which makes his work as a security guard easier.
In 1991, at the age of 21, he was accused of assault when he was guarding a landfill in Góngora, near the Navarrese capital.
Among the many confusing facts that circulate about him, one is that he was an escort for Nicolás Redondo, who died in 2023, or his son Nicolás Redondo Terreros.
“I don't remember, and I asked my father at the time, because information about this already came out.
And he didn't remember it either,” Redondo Terreros tells this newspaper.
In the first decade of this century, Koldo made a living as an escort for judges and councilors.
He had previously worked as a doorman in a nightclub and at the Osasuna stadium, several sources agree.
No one, except a former security colleague, confirms that he was also a security guard at a prostitution club.
Koldo García himself denied it in 2020 following the first reports.
A person who worked with him during that period remembers: “He had no problems, he was very helpful, ready for anything.
As an escort you have to keep up with the person protected, and he did whatever it took without question, and it was hard work, 24 hours a day.”
These are years in which police officers and, above all, civil guards become his group of friends.
In the Pamplona command there is a display case with a small sculpture of him, with a log and an axe, dedicated to the friends of his body.
Those friendships continue to this day: two Civil Guard agents, Koldo's most trusted agents, have been arrested in the investigation.
He met the second, RV, in Pamplona.
But the world of bodyguards, where one could earn around 3,000 euros compared to 1,000 euros as a security guard, ended with the end of ETA, and Koldo approached the PSN in 2010. “He introduces himself as a bodyguard, he says he has early retirement for disability, who was from the UGT and wanted to join,” recalls a leader.
“He was hardworking, he helped with everything.”
Always without charging.
He had an apartment in Pamplona, but his partner, Patricia Uriz, was from Huarte, a town of 7,000 inhabitants, traditionally dominated by Batasuna.
She offered to run there for the 2011 municipal elections and performed a miracle by achieving 170 votes, giving a councilor to the PSN for the first time.
Maybe in the town he was nobody, but in the party he was.
Those were times when sometimes you had to resort to providing the DNI of your colleagues from outside in order to complete lists, and the PSN managed to present itself in only about 60 municipalities out of 272. “In the party he was known because he was the only one who wanted to run for the candidacy. ”recalls a former leader.
“Now justice will say, but Koldo was a good person then, he was not a pit of evil,” says Juan José Lizarbe, who was general secretary of the PSN for 16 years.
“This is not the Koldo we knew.
What's more, now they say: 'Fuck Koldo, he didn't seem that savvy!' says another.
From his time in the City Council it is known that he was on the Stop Evictions platform and that he renounced the allocation of about 300 euros per month to allocate it to social works, they remember in the PSN.
Juan Carlos Cueto and Koldo García, during a meeting held on October 18, 2023, in the vicinity of the Chamartín train station (Madrid), according to Civil Guard monitoring.
Although he was dedicated to security, he obtained a permanent disability - although not absolute, which allowed him to continue working - due to a foot injury.
Hence the slight limp with which he walks.
He earned a large sum, but lost it badly when he set up a business with an aizkolari friend of his, who kept around 40,000 euros, according to PSN sources.
He was accused of two attacks, which were reported in the press.
One in 1995, when he was a security guard at a landfill, and another in 2010, after hitting a minor in a bar.
It was the day that Spain won the World Cup and Koldo was celebrating in Pamplona with friends from the Civil Guard, in the bar in front of the barracks, when he got into a fight with a young pro-independence man.
He asked for a pardon for the 1995 attack and the PP Government granted it.
The trial for the 2010 attack coincided with his entry into politics, and, the day he took office as councilor, supporters of the Abertzale left
demonstrated
against him.
They shouted “
Txakurra kampora”
(Out dog).
In 2015, he ran for municipal elections in Santesteban, much further away, one hour from Pamplona.
He was elected, but then he never collected the minutes.
The Decisive Call (2017)
There is a key day in the recent history of Koldo García in the PSOE.
More like one night, Tuesday, May 2, 2017. That day, an exultant Santos Cerdán arrived at the semi-basement on Marqués del Riscal Street with more than 57,000 endorsements supporting Pedro Sánchez's candidacy.
After touring Spain in his famous Peugeot, Sánchez had made a coup by obtaining almost the same endorsements as Susana Díaz.
There were 26 boxes full of signatures that had to be taken to Ferraz the next day.
But with a party broken and confronted during the primary process, no one trusted anyone, recognizes a senior socialist official;
And of course, you had to watch the boxes with the signatures.
Cerdán picked up the phone and called Koldo, who a few hours later arrived in Madrid in his old car.
He locked himself in the apartment and, sleeping on the carpet, spent two nights until the guarantees reached Ferraz.
The sources consulted assure that the image of Sánchez's Peugeot with Koldo at the wheel is not true.
The night of the endorsements arrived.
That small group was made up of Adriana Lastra, Santos Cerdán, Paco Salazar, José Luis Ábalos... and, in the background of the photo, as always, Koldo García.
“It was a time when there were no hands and he was useful for everything: making photocopies, taking someone to the station, bringing some
Coca-Colas
. ”
He was still not paid from the party, and in Pamplona, but he saw the opportunity to jump to Madrid when Sánchez won the primaries.
The socialist leader's small team, the four cats that they were, explains why they suddenly needed many trustworthy people and sought contacts.
Koldo asked to go to Madrid and, when Ábalos needed a driver, they called him.
It is when the PSOE gives him his first contract, as a driver, 26,000 euros per year, they detail in the party.
It was summer 2017, a year before Sánchez arrived at Moncloa, and a close and strange empathy emerged between Ábalos and Koldo.
So much so that Ábalos then takes it to the Ministry of Public Works.
He appoints him as advisor.
“Of course we were amazed, we all said it: this is a driver,” comments a socialist leader.
The advisor category, ministry sources explain, is the only one to hire someone from outside for positions of trust, because there were already drivers.
“He appears there from minute one.
He is a figure that surprised us at first: he was a driver, a secretary...”, recalls a former senior official.
But he was not in the cabinet, they did not call him, he had no functions.
“I never received an email from him,” this person summarizes.
Koldo had an office next to Ábalos's, door to door, but small, as a secretary.
To enter to see the minister you had to pass in front of him.
Another thing is that he was the access door to Ábalos or he had power: “No way.
What I have read that he was the mastermind of the plot, that he was feared, a beast, is not like that at all,” highlights the same source.
Ábalos explained that he needed someone with him 24 hours a day.
And Koldo became an accomplice, a confidant, a personal assistant.
He ran personal errands for her and took her agenda.
“From the outside she seemed like his slave, and he liked to show loyalty,” adds a socialist source.
Ábalos even took him on vacation with his family.
Koldo, accompanying his boss everywhere, rubbed shoulders with all the ministers, entered their offices.
I was literally in a bubble.
In the ministry, they call the exclusive area reserved for the minister, La Burbuja, with a dining room and a kitchen.
You enter with a pass that few people have.
If not, you have to call.
Few advisors had free access.
Koldo yes.
But to many of those around him, it was clear that he was out of place.
“He looked very loose, too much;
he did not measure, he did not filter.”
This also caused uncomfortable moments in front of third parties.
He was also a bit of a “ghost”, not very discreet.
He “would get within range of the camera, to appear on TV in the background.”
They scolded him for that, these sources say.
He liked to show off his contacts, meeting people.
“He had the habit of calling everyone by their first name: 'Fernando told me...' But what Fernando?
And he was Grande-Marlaska.
Things like that".
He also called Ábalos José, when everyone called him a “minister.”
He boasted about being able to resolve issues or being able to talk to someone important, even if he wasn't.
He is seen in the wiretaps that appear in the judicial summary.
Several people warned Ábalos that this relationship was problematic, various sources confirm, and he himself has admitted it.
“You know how it is,” the minister replied, shrugging his shoulders.
Koldo, increasingly self-confident, manages to hook up with his wife.
Patricia Uriz, who worked at the Corte Inglés in Pamplona, joins the ministry as secretary.
She had also joined the PSN, and even became part of María Chivite's first executive in 2014, as a member of Social Welfare.
Koldo went a little further each time.
He also put his brother in another entity, the public company Ineco.
And when Koldo himself was appointed advisor to the Renfe board, his former colleagues from Pamplona and Ferraz were already shaking their heads, according to what they now say.
At the ministry they explain that the Government arrived suddenly, with a motion of censure, and they had to improvise with the positions of trust.
Most of the advisors had training in engineering and law, but anyone who attended a council was asked to listen, take notes and then tell the minister what seemed relevant to them.
Koldo thus rounded out his salary.
And for Ábalos it was already irreplaceable.
He reminded her when it was time to take a pill.
He drove the car that took him to the airport to meet Delcy Rodríguez.
The trip to Mexico (2019)
The last decisive turn in Koldo García's life comes at the beginning of February 2019, with a trip to Mexico with the minister, in which he meets Víctor de Aldama, a businessman who owns the Zamora soccer club, who posed as honorary consul of Spain in Oaxaca.
A Mexican source present at those meetings affirms that Aldama was not and never was an honorary consul in that city, but he presented himself as such to try to convince the authorities of his ability to bring Air Europa flights to Huatulco, something that never happened either.
Until that day, Koldo had his driver's salary, his disability pension, he lived in a small apartment that Ábalos rented to him in the La Latina neighborhood, in the center of Madrid, and he still did not receive the bonus from Renfe (he was named six months later).
On that trip, his luck began to change.
There are 10 hours of flight, and on the Iberia IB 6400 on the way back he was able to talk calmly with Aldama.
The investigation by the Civil Guard locates the beginning of the criminal plot in that trip to Mexico.
A year later, in March 2020, the first mask contract arrived that made them rich.
Different sources from the ministry assure that, of all the names of businessmen who have appeared in the plot, the only one they saw there is Aldama.
A former senior official in the ministry speculates: “I imagine that's where it starts, you let yourself be loved, they want to become your friends.”
In that situation, someone like Koldo, who boasted, boasted of influence, contacts and closeness to the minister, must have been a coveted target.
The former Minister of Public Works, José Luis Ábalos (right), and Koldo García Izaguirre, upon arrival at Congress for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in Madrid on January 7, 2020. Jesús Hellín (Europa Press)
The great opportunity for these entrepreneurs comes with the pandemic.
“You have to think about what that was like.
I remember that when the masks arrived the atmosphere was one of saying: we have triumphed.
There were no complaints, they were of good quality, at a good price, among the first,” highlights a source from the ministry.
What the judicial investigation now reveals is that, thanks to Koldo, a third of the 54 million that were paid in nine contracts went into the pockets of the plot.
Juan Carlos Cueto took 9.6 million, according to the judge.
Aldama, 5.5 million.
Koldo, 1.5 million, which he allocated to the purchase of three apartments in Benidorm, in a rather clumsy way.
“My interpretation is that they took advantage of him.
They saw that it was a weak point in the chain, that it was believed to have influence and power,” says a source from the Ministry of Transport.
Another source from the institution believes the same: “This guy has not organized anything, he has done it for himself.”
Why Benidorm?
Koldo's parents lived there, they had always gone on vacation, like many Basques who fill the Mediterranean in July and August.
When Ábalos falls from the Government and from the party's organizational secretariat in 2021, Koldo disappears.
He settles in Polop, near Benidorm, in a recently built urbanization.
In one of those houses, the Police have found 23 phones, nine weapons, and cash.
But in the last year, says one of his old acquaintances, Koldo was looking, with some desperation, for some work in the Benidorm area.
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