Cospedal's ex-husband insists she introduced him to him. Villarejo in Genoa

Ignacio López del Hierro, former husband of former PP General Secretary María Dolores de Cospedal, has confirmed that it was he who introduced former PP Commissioner José Villarejo to Cospedal at a meeting at the PP headquarters and that he does not remember what they talked about, except for some mention of former Valencia Mayor Rita Barberá .

In his statement as a witness in the Kitchen case, López del Hierro retains his version as an investigator, from which he was finally excluded, as was Cospedal, who was not aware of this para-police operation of sufficient indiciary evidence, aimed at depriving former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas ofcompromising documentation for the party during the Gürtel investigation.

In this context, and after a fierce clash between the president of the jury, Teresa Palacios, and the PSOE lawyer Gloria de Pascual, who has proposed López del Hierro as a witness, which is becoming commonplace in this trial, the interrogation has ended up focusing on meetings with Villarejo on Genoa Street.

"Only once. I introduced my wife to Mr. Villarejo," Lopez del Hierro replies, pointing out that he had a personal relationship with the former commissioner. According to his account, the commissioner himself asked him to meet his wife. "My wife made no objection, and I presented it to her," he specifies.

In addition to denying that this meeting was intended for Villarejo, he has insisted that theonly reason for the meeting was to meet. He said that the meeting had dealt with matters of interest to the police, and that Cospedal had expressed his concerns at the time , "and that's it," he said.

The Spanish National High Court resumed the trial of the case on Wednesday, in which ten defendants, including former Minister of the Interior Jorge Fernández Díaz and former Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez, are involved, for this alleged operation, organized between 2013 and 2015.

At this session on Wednesday, the former head of the Judicial Police General Police Station, José García Losada, has also declared. Losada has denied having asked the investigator of the plot, Manuel Morocho, to remove from his reports references to "M. Rajoy" , linked to the former President of the Government, and has described the charge as "absurd" .

The lawyer, Javier Iglesias, was also due to testify today. Last Monday, Bárcena appointed Iglesias as the "PP envoy" who, according to the former treasurer, offered him 500,000 euros in 2013 in exchange for falsifying the PP's B accounting papers, or threatened him that his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, would go to prison if he declared at the investigation stage.

Iglesias, on the other hand, has not testified. When the popular accusation of the PSOE asked him if he knew Villarejo, he said he would not answer on the grounds of professional secrecy .

For this reason, the jury has suspended the hearing in order to examine whether it protects professional secrets.