The judicial investigation of the so-called Zapatero Case places Tarragona in the spotlight for an alleged agreed-upon commission around the Hard Rock project. The case indicates that the construction company Aldesa agreed with a company linked to the environment of former socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on a payment to mediate in the operation.
The data that draws attention is the percentage set in that agreement. The agreed commission was 3%, the same figure associated with the 3% Case, the plot of alleged corruption and illegal financing linked to Convergència for payments of around that percentage in exchange for public contracts from the Generalitat de Catalunya and city councils governed by CDC.
The Hard Rock project still hasn't started in Vila-seca and Salou
The judicial case connects this alleged intermediation with the macro leisure complex planned between Vila-seca and Salou, one of the most debated developments on the Costa Daurada in recent years. Despite its size and long political and administrative processing, the complex has not yet materialized.
The designation of Aldesa and a company from Zapatero's circle thus appears linked to an operation that continues without real execution on the ground. This distance between the investigated commission and the absence of a completed project once again focuses attention on everything that surrounded the gestation of Hard Rock in Tarragona.
The investigated commission reproduces the 3% of another plot of alleged corruption
The figure is not a minor detail within the case. The 3% coincides with the percentage that gave its name to the 3% Case, in which various construction companies allegedly paid commissions of around that volume to obtain public contracts.
In that plot, the contracts under suspicion affected both the Generalitat de Catalunya and city councils governed by CDC. Now, the investigation into Hard Rock incorporates that same percentage reference in an operation linked to Vila-seca and Salou, although in a different context and under a different judicial case.
The macro complex to which the alleged intermediation is associated was precisely planned in Vila-seca and Salou, in Tarragona, and to this day has not yet materialized, while the commission investigated in the case was set at 3%.