Former Spanish Transport Minister José Luis Ábalos used his parliamentary assistant to help friend Claudia Montes draft her resignation from the ruling Socialist Workers' Party.
Leaked WhatsApp messages obtained by Spanish newspaper LA RAZÓN show that assistant María Icíar Jaén Bohórquez helped refine the resignation letter sent to party organisation secretary Santos Cerdán in April 2025.
In the letter, Montes denied having any relationship with Ábalos or any connection to prostitution, while stating that it was disgraceful that the party of equality had failed to support her.
Montes, a former beauty pageant contestant known as Miss Asturias, was placed in a public company by Ábalos, according to findings by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Drafting the resignation letter
The communications reveal that the preparations for the letter took place on April 10, 2025, beginning in the morning when Jaén sent Montes a television screenshot announcing an upcoming broadcast about alleged harassment Montes suffered from Ábalos's former advisor Koldo García.
During that morning, the two women held three phone calls lasting a combined total of more than 45 minutes before Montes sent an initial draft of her resignation via WhatsApp that afternoon.
Jaén pointed out that the draft did not include a recipient in its header, prompting Montes to apologise and explain that she was suffering from a severe headache.
Following another four-minute phone call, Montes requested that Jaén add a line stating she had asked to join the equality group of her local party federation to share the document, but had received no answer or acceptance.
Jaén reformatted the text into a Word document and returned it to Montes, who thanked her and said she would copy the text into a PDF file.
Minutes later, Montes expressed confusion over the word insidias in the text, asking whether Jaén meant injurias and admitting she did not know the meaning of insidias.
Jaén reassured her that insidias was the correct term, and Montes subsequently forwarded the final PDF version of the document.
After news of the resignation broke in the media later that evening, Jaén noted how quickly the story had been published and advised Montes to rest, adding that the message was very powerful.
Judicial proceedings and prison sentence
The exchanges between the two women extended to the broader judicial investigation into corruption surrounding Ábalos, who is currently serving a 24-year prison sentence.
On March 12, 2025, Montes expressed concern after seeing coverage of herself and Ábalos on the Antena 3 television network, describing the media focus as increasingly overwhelming.
Jaén encouraged her to remain strong, explaining that Ábalos was meeting with his defense attorney and referring to the news outlet as a mouthpiece for the main opposition Popular Party.
In further messages, Jaén asserted that the situation should not come without a political cost for the opposition party and remarked that the shared hardship had allowed the two women to form a close bond.
Jaén added that there would eventually be an opportunity for them to meet in person and laugh about events that initially seemed dark, reminding Montes that all difficult situations eventually pass.
Political fallout and ongoing investigations
The Supreme Court sentenced Ábalos in June 2026 for corruption offenses tied to the long-running Koldo case, leading to his imprisonment at the Soto del Real facility in the Community of Madrid.
Ábalos had previously served as the minister of transport and as the third-ranking official in the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, known locally as the PSOE, before breaking with party leadership.
Six days after police arrested his former advisor Koldo García, Ábalos defied demands from party leaders to resign his parliamentary seat and instead moved to the Mixed Group in the Congress of Deputies as an unattached member.
Jaén, who was a member of the local PSOE branch in Celis and a former advisor at the Ministry of Transport, followed Ábalos to the parliamentary group and took on extra-parliamentary tasks to assist him.
Santos Cerdán, the former PSOE organisation secretary to whom Montes addressed her resignation letter, is also under formal judicial investigation in connection with alleged kickbacks from construction companies in exchange for public works contracts.
