Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez dismissed a judge’s fresh probe for alleged misappropriation against his wife Begona Gomez on Tuesday, saying there was “nothing” supporting the “false” accusations.

The latest complaint widens Juan Carlos Peinado’s ongoing investigation against Gomez for alleged corruption and influence-peddling that has piled pressure on Sanchez’s minority left-wing government.

Peinado accepted a complaint by Hazte Oir, an ultra-Catholic association with far-right ties that has previously launched legal action against Gomez, according to a Madrid court ruling dated Monday.

Hazte Oir accused Gomez of malpractice and misappropriation in connection with software used at the Complutense University of Madrid where she worked.

Gomez was also summoned to appear in court on November 18, the ruling said.

Sanchez said all the lawsuits brought against his wife to date “come from the same far-right organisations who are falsely accusing” her.

“Time will put things in their place and absolute calm, because where there is nothing, nothing can come from it,” he told reporters in Mumbai at the end of a trip to India.

The main conservative opposition Popular Party demanded explanations from Sanchez.

It was “as if this level of economic, political and moral corruption were something normal”, its leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo wrote on X.

Peinado began his initial probe in April following a complaint filed by anti-graft NGO Manos Limpias (“Clean Hands”) which has links to the far right.

They accused Gomez of using her husband’s position as leverage in her professional life.

Sanchez and his Socialist party have dismissed the accusations as a smear campaign by the conservative and far-right opposition against his fragile minority government.

Addressing a separate sexual assault scandal shaking his far-left junior coalition partner Sumar, Sanchez on Tuesday expressed his “total confidence” in Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz and Health Minister Monica Garcia.

Sumar has faced accusations of hypocrisy and covering up abuse allegations against one of its leading figures, a painful blow for a government priding itself on equality and the fight against gender-based violence.

Sanchez said Sumar handled the affair “decisively from the first second” and highlighted his far-left ministers’ commitment to “the feminist cause”.

AFP