Over the past 15 months, news of Iñaki Urdangarín being offered new conditions to serve his sentence for tax fraud and money laundering have come out regularly. Let’s take a look back at the timeline of the story.
On 12 June 2018, Spain’s Supreme Court ruled to uphold Urdangarín’s prison sentence, although they reduced it to five years and ten months from six years and three months. It was emitted after 11 years of investigations in the Nóos Case, which alleged that Urdangarín and other people used tax fraud and money laundering to improperly benefit from taxpayers’ money.
Five days later, on 18 June (the last possible day for him to do so), he signed himself in a penitentiary in Ávila, a small town northwest of Madrid. He was the sole occupant of the men’s building.
In December 2020, the Penitentiary Institutions (the Spanish equivalent of the American Federal Bureau of Prisons) applied the 100.2 article of the Penal Code, and he was transferred to a Social Integration Centre in Alcalá de Henares, on the outskirts of Madrid. He was allowed to go out every day to work for an NGO that cares for people with disabilities but had to go back to sleep in his cell and was only allowed out for one weekend a month.
Just a month later, in January 2021, a penitentiary judge decided to give him the so-called “third grade,” also known as “semi-freedom.” He had to sleep in the penitentiary only four days a week, Monday through Thursday; he was allowed to go out of the prison every weekend. He had the possibility to ask for 48 days of freedom instead of the previous 36.
In the sentence, it was also stated that he was to undergo the Intervention Program for Economic Crimes (Programa de Intervención en Delitos Económicos, or PIDEco in Spanish), a rehabilitation programme for people who perpetrated economic crimes, designed to teach them to better apply the laws of the state.
At the end of February 2021, a judge granted him a transfer, moving him from Alcalá de Henares to Zaballa prison in Álava, where he enjoyed the same conditions. The move was requested because Urdangarín had received an offer to work in a legal firm in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a short 25 minutes drive from the facility, and because many of his family members still lived in the capital of Basque County.
In August 2021, the Penitentiary Institutions applied article 86.4 of the penal code, and he was granted even lighter conditions. He wasn’t mandated to sleep in prison anymore, and he could be on house arrest, which was to be controlled remotely, via phone and computers, which meant that he didn’t have to wear an electronic bracelet.
In October 2021, he concluded his Intervention Programme, and, after careful review of his results and the terms and conditions of his sentence, on 2 March 2022, a Basque County Judge of the Penitentiary Control granted him parole. The conditions of his parole are not yet known, although it is safe to assume that he will no longer be monitored as tightly during his house arrest and will enjoy more freedom to travel.
This is a freedom which he has already enjoyed, as he was seen on 5 March at the Blaugrana Stadium in Barcelona with his second child Pablo for the match to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Barcelona handball team.
During his time working in the Vitoria legal firm, Urdangarín met Ainhoa Armentia, a colleague with whom he developed a romantic relationship. Pictures of the two of them holding hands on a local beach were published in Spain, and that prompted Infanta Cristina to sign a joint statement announcing the “interruption of our marital relationship.”
