Koldo García, the "dumb" driver who learned to protect himself

“I'm fed up. Of course, you think I'm stupid, I'm from a small town, I'm very rude, I'm capable of breaking a guy's legs just because he asks me to (…) It's like with time, you learn.” Rarely do a couple of phrases, spoken by the protagonist himself, serve to so accurately portray a character with far more shadows than light : Koldo García Izaguirre (Barakaldo, 1970).

The rugged, burly man who rose to media attention as the advisor who carried briefcases for former minister José Luis Ábalos, after arriving at Transport with a resume tainted by violence.

The accomplice of the last former PSOE organizational secretaries was ostracized by his supporters when the Civil Guard hunted him down for crimes such as belonging to a criminal organization.

The former nightclub host with a disability pension had spent years plotting his life insurance policy, unbeknownst to the other corners of the corrupt triangle, with recordings that this week shook the foundations of the Socialist Party's national headquarters on Ferraz Street.

From Navarra to Madrid He made the leap into politics and was a PSN councilor in Huarte between 2011 and 2015.

He had already warned in November 2023, just three months before his arrest: he was fed up and the passage of time had hardened him. If he fell, the rest would follow. Since his arrest, rivers of ink have flowed about "the last socialist aizkolari," as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described him in 2014 in a Facebook post with the photo at the top of this profile. It was learned that he was convicted of breaking a man's ribs while guarding a landfill. Or facing a fine for hitting a young man wearing a T-shirt with the word "Independencezia."

But the latest report from the Civil Guard's central operational unit (UCO)—and especially the transcripts of the recordings he made surreptitiously—serves to shed further light on this figure more suited to the heyday of Spanish corruption, with Luis Roldán as its greatest exponent, than to current times. Obscene chatter about betrayals and threats, alleged bribery stemming from rigged public works contracts, on-demand prostitutes, and uncontrolled squandering of funds.

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García arrived in Madrid with Santos Cerdán after the Navarrese Socialist Party (PSN) united them. He had retrained as a bodyguard, a common practice among security guards, during the final years of ETA terrorism. He later entered politics and became a PSN councilor in the Navarrese town of Huarte from 2011 to 2015.

Once in Madrid, as revealed in the latest UCO report, it was Cerdán who first recruited him as Ábalos's driver and then as an advisor to the Ministry of Transport. He was Cerdán's useful idiot so that the corrupt triangle created by the Civil Guard could continue operating in the public works department par excellence.

The UCO has found eight audio recordings Police sources suspect that the file on Ábalos's former advisor may be larger.

The former bodyguard suspected the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office was following him; hence, he intensified his meetings with members of the network in late 2023, recording them without their consent. The UCO (Uruguayan Criminal Investigation Unit) has found eight audio recordings that have cornered Cerdán, but police sources suspect García's file may be much larger.

When Ábalos was dismissed, García was treated like a pariah, just as he claims to feel in the recordings. He begged for financial support for himself, his wife, Patricia, and his brother Joseba for all the favors he had rendered, but no one took him seriously. No one can accuse him of not warning them.