The president of the court, José Antonio Patrocinio, has granted the request of Manos Limpias to project certain passages of the video in court with the statement that David Sánchez gave before the investigating judge, Beatriz Biedma, relating, among other points, to the operation and location of the Performing Arts Office.
After giving the green light to this petition, the section of the Provincial Court of Badajoz that is trying the hiring of Pedro Sánchez's brother by the Provincial Council of Badajoz in 2017, first as coordinator of the conservatories' activities and later as head of the Performing Arts Office, has been able to view fragments of that first appearance, made in January 2025.
It was the lawyer for Manos Limpias, José María Bueno, who, once the statements of the eleven investigated parties concluded on Thursday morning, asked the court to show some excerpts from the statement that Pedro Sánchez's brother offered before the investigating magistrate.
According to Bueno, in that statement during the investigation phase, David Sánchez "declared about matters that he has not declared today," and pointed out the existence of a "certain contradiction" between the two versions "in the little that he has declared."
The lawyer for the popular prosecution specified to the court the exact minutes of the recording that, in his opinion, should be heard, focusing on issues such as the project he presented in the selection process for the position, the search for a rental property, or the tasks he performed.
Sánchez's lawyer rejects the reproduction of the video
On the contrary, David Sánchez's defense attorney, Emilio Cortés, opposed Manos Limpias's initiative, understanding that it is "doubly" mistaken. Firstly, Cortés recalled that this Monday the Provincial Court itself declared one of the crimes attributed to Sánchez, that of acceptance of illegal appointment, to be time-barred, which is why the accused has not addressed this point in his statement on Thursday.
"At this procedural stage, or at the procedural stage when Mr. Sánchez begins to testify, the facts relating to everything to do with his first hiring are de facto dismissed," the lawyer stated.
Furthermore, he specified that the regulation only contemplates reading a prior statement "when the witness's statement is not substantially consistent with the one made in the investigation," and he stressed that Sánchez is not appearing as a witness, but as an accused.
"The abbreviated procedure perfectly allows for the homologation of the investigation rules, but of course, it allows for the homologation of the investigation rules in the very terms in which the investigation discipline was drafted. And here we are talking about a witness. As far as I know, Mr. Sánchez is not a witness," Cortés pointed out.
He also added that the analogical application of these rules "can never prejudice the defendant," even if discrepancies were found between what was said in the investigation phase and what was stated in the oral trial.
The court upholds Manos Limpias' request
After hearing the parties, the president of the chamber briefly suspended the hearing and, upon resuming it on Thursday afternoon, announced that it had been decided to grant Manos Limpias' request and proceed with the playback of the indicated passages from the video with David Sánchez's statements.
To support his resolution, Patrocinio cited a "very recent" Supreme Court ruling, dated April 30, 2025, "ratified by another on April 22, 2026, in a case identical to this one," from which he read several paragraphs.
According to said resolution, "the trial court may give prevalence to the evidence presented in the investigation phase over that presented in the plenary session to base its conviction, in case of disagreement between the two," as had been invoked by the representative of Manos Limpias, the magistrate explained.
This is valid evidence as long as it has been presented before the judicial authority with all guarantees and has been subjected to effective contradiction in the oral trial, "as has happened in this case because that statement was made with the due guarantees," the president of the court remarked.
After announcing his decision, several fragments of the recorded statement were played in the courtroom, which prompted a complaint from David Sánchez's lawyer, who maintained that regarding those points "it is impossible that there could have been contradiction because he was not questioned about it," to which the president responded that "the decision has already been made."