MADRID.- Spain's Civil Guard arrested six people on Thursday, November 5, 2026, in a new operation in the Koldo corruption case, including Cristian Corvillo, the businessman who drove Pedro Sánchez's car during the 2017 Socialist primaries, and Andrea de la Torre, the partner of former transport minister José Luis Ábalos, Infobae reported.
The arrests were carried out by the Guardia Civil's Central Operative Unit (UCO) in Madrid, Córdoba, Valencia and Seville, alongside searches of Ábalos's home in Valencia and requests for documents at the offices of Adif and Adif Alta Velocidad, Spain's rail infrastructure manager. The operation was ordered by Judge Ismael Moreno of the National Court, who has opened a new separate case in the investigation, which remains under seal.
The arrests and the searches
Corvillo was arrested in Córdoba, where UCO agents escorted him out of his home shortly after 3:00 p.m., without handcuffs, according to Europa Press. De la Torre was detained in the course of the operation, and the home of Ábalos in Valencia was searched again by agents, Demócrata reported.
Agents also went to the Madrid offices of Adif and Adif Alta Velocidad to request documentation on public contracts under investigation. Adif confirmed its staff cooperated and said the visit was a request for information, not a search of its headquarters. The Seville headquarters of construction firm Azvi were also searched, according to Libertad Digital. None of the six arrested is expected to be brought immediately before a judge, according to reports of the operation.
A new sealed case
The operation stems from a new line of investigation opened by Judge Moreno, who sits in Central Court of Instruction No. 2 at the National Court. Moreno received a report from the UCO's economic crime unit dated November 3 and, after examining it, ordered the opening of an eighth separate piece of the Koldo proceedings on Wednesday, November 4, in coordination with the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Infobae reported.
The judicial order, which Infobae said it was able to consult, does not detail the content of the UCO report or specify the object of the new investigation. The proceedings remain under seal, so it is not yet known what specific acts are attributed to Corvillo or what documents the agents are seeking at Adif Alta Velocidad.
Who is Cristian Corvillo
Corvillo is a businessman from Córdoba and a Socialist Party activist whose name became publicly known for driving the car Sánchez used during the 2017 primaries, when Sánchez travelled across Spain to recover the leadership of the PSOE after resigning in October 2016. Sánchez went on to win the primaries in May 2017. PSOE sources consulted by Infobae stressed that Corvillo never held the post of Sánchez's official driver, while not denying that he drove the vehicle during that campaign. Sánchez himself publicly thanked Corvillo for his "silent and unknown work" at an event in Córdoba.
His name was already on the investigators' radar. In March 2020, during the first days of the pandemic, Corvillo sent the certificates for personal protective equipment being handled by the network to the fixer Víctor de Aldama, from an email account of his company Egisse, at 6:02 p.m. on March 18. Less than an hour later, Aldama forwarded the message to Koldo García. Investigators also found a note of €100,000 next to his first name in a document drawn up by Aldama in March 2020, linked to the handling of health-material contracts — though its inclusion in that record alone does not prove he received the money, Infobae reported.
Corvillo appeared before the Senate's Koldo inquiry commission in March 2025, where he acknowledged appearing in UCO reports but refused to answer senators' questions, saying he did not know what position investigators attributed to him. More recently, on September 3, he testified as a witness before Judge Santiago Pedraz in the hydrocarbons fraud investigation linked to Aldama, admitting business dealings with the fixer and meetings with Ábalos on PSOE matters.
The Adif connection
The UCO has been investigating Corvillo's relations with Aldama and with Koldo García, the former ministerial adviser who gives the case its name, in particular over the mask contracts awarded during the pandemic. During that period, Adif and Puertos del Estado awarded contracts to Soluciones de Gestión y Apoyo a Empresas, the Aldama-linked company that supplied masks to public bodies. The Civil Guard is investigating whether Koldo García used his influence in the Transport Ministry, then led by Ábalos, to steer those contracts and obtain commissions.
The inquiries into Adif go beyond the health-material purchases. The UCO has also documented alleged irregularities in public works awards during the Ábalos era, with possible interventions by officials at the rail body to favour certain construction firms. Among the names that have surfaced in this branch are former Adif president Isabel Pardo de Vera and former Director General of Roads Javier Herrero, Infobae reported.
The operation came a day after Adif's president, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, resigned following the resignation of transport minister Óscar Puente after the Urda train crash on October 28, which killed 69 people, El País reported. The arrests also land in the middle of the campaign for a general election on November 29.
What the Koldo case is
The Koldo affair began in February 2024 as a corruption prosecution centred on Ábalos and his former adviser Koldo García Izaguirre, over the purchase of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and the alleged rigging of public contracts. Twenty people were arrested in the first wave of the investigation, and the case has since grown into several separate pieces covering transport, energy and health contracts, according to the case's public record.
Ábalos is in prison after the Supreme Court handed down sentences in part of the case, while other branches remain open. The new operation is the latest of those branches, and the first to reach the circle of people who worked around Sánchez during his 2017 leadership campaign.
What remains unknown
Because the new piece is under seal, the specific charges against each of the six detainees have not been disclosed, and it is not known which contracts or awards the UCO is examining at Adif Alta Velocidad. An arrest is not a conviction, and none of the six has been charged in this new piece so far. The investigation continues, and this article will be updated when the court lifts the secrecy or the detainees appear before the judge.
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Sources: Infobae, November 5, 2026; Demócrata / Europa Press, November 5, 2026; Heraldo de León, November 5, 2026; elcontrapeso, November 5, 2026; El País, November 4, 2026; Wikipedia (Koldo affair). Cover photo: José Luis Ábalos (right) with Emiliano García-Page in Toledo in April 2018 (CC BY-SA 2.0, Emiliano García-Page Sánchez via Wikimedia Commons), with a small flag of Spain added in the top-right corner. The photo is from 2018, not from today's operation.