Whistleblower’s Crusade Helps Fell Spanish PM, Government

Undaunted by death threats, a former municipal worker uncovered a pattern of corruption. Her revelations helped bring down the government of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, forced out by a no-confidence vote in Parliament on 1 June, 2018.

Ana Garrido, speaking to Blueprint for Free Speech, detailed before the fall of Rajoy how she kept digging when she was working for the municipality of Boadilla del Monte, and she refused to sign what she said were illegal documents to approve contracts for favored companies.

That was 10 years ago. It has taken this long for the impact to be felt in the democractic processes of the country. But the crusade ultimately contributed to Rajoy’s ouster after he failed to take responsibility for his party’s involvement in scandals that a week earlier saw his conservative Popular Party fined $287,000 and its former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, receiving a 33-year sentence on charges that included fraud, tax evasion and money laundering.

When she first came upon the corruption, she told the BBC that she was afraid because, “There is nothing like a whistleblowers’ charter in Spain. Not only are we not protected, but we can be persecuted and harassed by those we accuse of abusing power.”

The chain of evidence that began with her defiance led to the highest echelons of the party, making Rajoy the first prime minister in modern Spanish history to be defeated in a no-confidence motion.

Socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, who filed the motion after Rajoy’s party was implicated in the corruption scandal, will become the leader.

Earlier, Garrido said in an interview with Blueprint that she was able to stay at it because she didn’t have children who could be threatened as leverage to stop her from speaking out against what she saw.

“I have received many pressures through the media, with fake news. I have received death threats, and my life goes on in the courts trying to defend myself from all this kind of harassment so fierce that looks like a hunt toward me,” she said.

At first, after uncovering the wrongdoing, she said she felt depressed by the pressures but then began to investigate. “When I crossed all the data I realized that was I was facing was not only a presumably corrupted Mayor but an organized corruption network at the national level,” she said.

“Before I was a fully happy person now it is a radically opposite life. It is a life in which the main goal is to survive. Politicians have tried and have succeeded in making me the anti-pedagogical of a citizen.

“That is to say, I am the person punished for reporting instead of the person protected for reporting. And they want to tell society, ‘Ana Garrido has suffered this. Don’t do what she did.’ And I fight to get the opposite.” She got it.

See Ana Garrido and other whistleblowers speak about their experiences here