Yolanda Díaz calls companies "corrupt" after the Cerdán case, and Antonio Garamendi responds: "The one who corrupts is the one who has the power."

Third Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, called companies "corrupt" this Thursday after learning that the UCO report on alleged bribes paid to Santos Cerdán includes Justo Vicente Pelegrini, the former director of Construction at Acciona in Spain, who was fired following this information. During her meeting with Pedro Sánchez regarding the president's round of contacts with his partners, Díaz demanded that "democratic regeneration" measures be adopted, such as prohibiting companies implicated in corruption cases from being contracted by any public administration.

These statements have been refuted by the president of the Spanish CEOE (Spanish National Executive Branch), Antonio Garamendi, who rejected the claim that companies are corrupt: "I cannot accept it, and I reject this approach," he argued. Garamendi lamented the Vice President of the Government's decision to make these accusations: "The one who corrupts is the one who has the power," he responded.

The CEOE leader has asserted that companies cannot always be blamed for "absolutely everything that happens": "Every time there's a problem, I evade it and blame companies in general, and then they call us corruptors," he denounced at a forum organized by 'Diario Sur' in Malaga.

In Garamendi's opinion, corruption doesn't operate in the sense of "I have money and I'll corrupt you," but rather in the sense that politicians blackmail businesspeople and tell them "if you don't give me money, I won't give you" a contract. When specifically questioned about the role of corporations in this context, he alluded to the fact that "if you take away three or four companies and there are two million companies, I don't know what we're talking about... The other thing is a political party, a government, it is what it is, it's a system that exists." Thus, he stated that "in this case, the company will have to take appropriate measures. It has fired whoever it needs to fire; if there is liability, there will be liability, and there is justice."

The leader of Sumar in the coalition government demanded that Sánchez "guarantee that the case we have learned about will not spread to the entire Socialist Party" and that if it affects more people, they will be removed from political life.