The tentacles of El Yunque, a sect of far-right Catholics who seek to infiltrate the structures of political power, could have reached the outskirts of the family itself.
Photo: The personal assistant and an employee of Urdangarín are linked to El Yunque.
Note: Iñaki Urdangarin Liebaert (*1968) is a retired Spanish handball player turned entrepreneur and brother-in-law of King Felipe VI. Urdangarin was convicted of embezzling about 6 million euros in public funds for sporting events since 2004 through his nonprofit foundation, the so-called Nóos case, and of political corruption by using his former courtesy title of Duke of Palma de Mallorca as the husband of the Infanta Cristina, daughter of King Juan Carlos. He is currently imprisoned in Ávila.
The tentacles of El Yunque, a sect of far-right Catholics who seek to infiltrate the structures of political power, might have reached the outskirts of the royal family itself. Julia Cuquerella Gamboa, personal assistant to Iñaki Urdangarín - and occasionally to Infanta Cristina de Borbón - and her sister Olga Cuquerella Gamboa, one of the phantom employees that Don Juan Carlos' son-in-law hired to pay less to the Treasury, have family ties to the secret society, according to what sources close to the Casa del Rey and various lay Christian associations confronted with the sect have revealed to El Confidencial.
The sisters Julia and Olga Cuquerella are cited in several emails intercepted by the police in the records of the headquarters of the Nóos Institute and other companies linked to the alleged criminal network woven by the son-in-law of the King and his partner, Diego Torres, both accused. The latter refused to testify last Saturday before the judge investigating the case, Jose Castro.
In one of these e-mails, dated 18 September 2009, Julia Cuquerella writes to Urdangarín: "Iñaki, as you know, SAR [referring to Her Royal Highness the Infanta Cristina] has asked me to make some purchases that I cannot account for as expenses of Aizoon [the real estate agency to which a large part of the public funds collected by the Nóos Institute, owned 50% by the Duke of Palma and the Infanta, were diverted]. If you like I give the receipts to Marco [the accountant of the plot, Marco Tejeiro] for him to reimburse me the money from the cashbox. Will you give us the OK? Thank you.”
Her sister Olga Cuquerella was one of the ghost employees hired by Urdangarín and the King's youngest daughter for the real estate agency Aizoon in order to defraud the Treasury. In another e-mail intercepted by the police and incorporated to the summary available to the judge Castro, Tejeiro asked Julia on September 9, 2009: "Do you know anyone who might be interested in being hired to accumulate Social Security? It would be for the remainder of the year and for the next.” The personal assistant to the Duke of Palma replies to the accountant the next day: "My sister-in-law, who is in Madrid, is interested.”
El Yunque and Intereconomía
The sources consulted during the investigation assure that the sister-in-law Julia Cuquerella alludes to is the wife of her brother Marcial Cuquerella Gamboa, director general of Intereconomía TV and presumed member of El Yunque, according to all the testimonies collected by El Confidencial. Marcial Cuquerella denied to this newspaper belonging to the secret sect, whose members consider themselves "a caste of elected" sworn to "fight against the perverse enemies of God and the fatherland": "I have been linked to El Yunque for a long time, and this is the first time someone has asked me directly. But I have nothing to do with them.”
Fernando López Luengos, vice-president of the association Educación y Persona and author of a very critical report about the sect on behalf of the Episcopal Conference, in which he exposes the alleged members of the secret society and its activities of infiltration and recruitment of adolescents, has pointed to Marcial Cuquerella as one of the most active members of El Yunque. So has priest Luis Fernando de Prada, spiritual director of the San Pablo-CEU University. However, both López Luengos and De Prada, in conversation with El Confidencial, refused to make statements.
After ruling out her sister-in-law, Urdangarín's personal assistant proposed to the plot accountant the names of three people to occupy as many fictitious jobs in Aizoon, including that of her sister Olga Cuquerella. "She has a girl born in January 2008," Julia Cuquerella told Tejeiro. "She says she assumes you already know, but she thinks the company has a bonus for hiring women with children under three. She told me that she believes that Aizoon can ask for social benefits as a company for having contracted mothers of small children and/or large families.”
Julia Cuquerella has refused to answer the calls of this newspaper. Her sister Olga, a very active member of Hazte Oír, one of the platforms that allegedly serve as a cover for El Yunque, also denied any link to the secret society. “In regard to my brother Marcial I don’t know, but I have nothing to do with El Yunque. And all I know about my sister Julia is that she is a supernumerary member of Opus Dei,” she said.
Crusaders of Christ the King
Olga Cuquerella's husband is Álvaro Zulueta, treasurer of Hazte Oír and one of the key members of El Yunque in Spain, according to Mexican journalist Álvaro Delgado, author of the book El Yunque: la ultraderecha en el poder, which won him the National Journalism Prize in his country. Delgado points to Zulueta as the connecting piece between El Yunque, Hazte Oír and the Crusaders of Christ the King, a fundamentalist priestly fraternity created, among others, by the founder of the secret sect in Mexico, Ramón Plata Moreno, which serves as spiritual support for its members.
The ties of the Cuquerella Gamboas with the royal family go back several decades, and are not limited to the working relationship of Julia and Olga with Aizoon, Urdangarín's company and Infanta Cristina. Their grandfather, Navy Admiral Marboa Gamboa Sánchez-Barcaiztegui, who died in 1986, maintained a very close relationship with Don Juan Carlos and was appointed by him as a royal senator in the early years of the Transition period.
The soldier always stood out for his ultra-right positions, such as when he demanded the suppression of the term "nationalities" in the Constitution, demanded that the King should dissolve the courts in case of “reasons of particular importance for the national interests” and fought fiercely against divorce, arguing that it could only be accepted "in the event of the death of one of the spouses.”
