Spanish election front-runner faces questions over link to drug trafficker

Just days before Spain’s general election, the favourite to become the country’s new prime minister, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, is facing calls to explain a friendship he had with a notorious drug trafficker.

Mr Nunez Feijoo’s conservative Popular Party (PP) has been leading polls as he aims to win Sunday’s ballot and remove the socialist incumbent, Pedro Sanchez, from office.

Members of Mr Sanchez’s left-wing coalition government, however, have started attacking the conservative over his relationship with Marcial Dorado, who received a 14-year jail sentence for smuggling cocaine after his arrest in 2003. In 2013, photographs were published in the Spanish media showing the two men, who are both from the north-western region of Galicia, relaxing together on a boat off the Atlantic coast. There were also photographs of them together in the northern region of Asturias.

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The photographs reportedly dated from 1995 and 1996, when Mr Nunez Feijoo was head of Galicia’s public health department and when they were published, he was president of the region and a prominent figure in the PP.

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During a one-on-one campaign debate in advance of this Sunday’s election, Mr Sanchez appeared to make an oblique reference to the scandal, saying: “I can explain all my trips: by land, by air, by sea, who I have gone with and where.”

The labour minister in his coalition administration, Yolanda Diaz – who is running as the lead candidate for the new left-wing platform Sumar – however, has been more explicit.

At a campaign rally in Madrid, Ms Diaz, who is herself Galician, called on the PP leader to explain “what you were doing with Marcial Dorado when all of Spain knew who he was”.

“There are entire towns in Galicia with mothers who represent the dignity of our country,” she continued. “Mothers who watched their sons die [from drug use] without receiving compassion, while Feijoo had a close friendship with one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers.”

In the 1980s, Galicia, a poor rural region, became Europe’s main point of entry for cocaine arriving from Latin America. The industry provided work and money for local people, although the drugs involved destroyed many lives. Nacho Carretero, a journalist who wrote an acclaimed account of the phenomenon, Farina, has said that the drug barons that emerged at the time “came across as saviours – they created jobs and wealth, they were highly regarded”.

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When the photographs linking him to Dorado first emerged, Mr Nunez Feijoo said that he “knew nothing about [his] past or his activities” and that he broke off the relationship in 1997, when Dorado was being investigated for tobacco smuggling. In a later interview, he said: “There was no Google in those days to let you know the exact origin of every person you met in life.”

He also said: “As far as I know, [Dorado] has not cost me any votes.” This appears to be true, given that after the publication of the photographs, Mr Nunez Feijoo won two more elections in Galicia – his third and fourth absolute majorities in the region.

Another senior figure in the government, energy and ecological transition minister, Teresa Ribera, has also criticised the conservative leader on this issue as election day approaches. Wondering why Mr Nunez Feijoo did not intend to take part in a campaign debate with other candidates this week, she asked: “What is he hiding? Is it a drug trafficker on a yacht?”

Given the entrenched nature of Spanish politics and the fact that this scandal did nothing to dent Mr Nunez Feijoo’s electoral performances previously, the government’s attempts to draw attention to it now may do little to affect his lead in polls, which suggest he will be able to form a government, although requiring the support of the far-right Vox party.

The case has, however, raised questions about the standards Spaniards expect of their public figures.

“Feijoo has a good chance to govern Spain,” noted columnist Xavier Vidal-Folch in El Pais newspaper. “What would the political world in Finland, or almost any other country in the EU, say about a candidate for prime minister who had these dangerous friendships?”