Spain is not just a world-leader in tourism. In corruption, too, it consistently outperforms the competition and beats its own records. So, as 2024 draws to a close, I have reviewed the year's top three corruption cases, assessing them on the basis of three criteria: seniority of protagonists, amount of money involved and sheer audacity. Each comes from a different world - football, politics and law enforcement.

In third place is the case involving Carlo Ancelotti, a former Italian football player and manager of Real Madrid CF. In March, it emerged that Spanish prosecutors were requesting a prison sentence of almost five years for Ancelotti, whom they suspect is guilty of tax fraud during his first stint as Real Madrid's manager, between 2013 and 2015.

As in all high-profile corruption cases, the allegations against Ancelotti raised one major question: how much is enough? Ancelotti was reportedly earning ten million a year as Real Madrid's coach. Still, the charges brought against him (yet to be proven) concern his personal finances only and haven't affected the reputation of the club he manages - unlike 2023's Negreira scandal, in which Madrid's great rival Barcelona FC was accused of bribery.

Second place goes to the Koldo face mask scandal, named after Koldo García, ex-adviser to the Socialist-led coalition's former transport minister, José Ábalos. Pedro Sánchez has now also been dragged into the case, after a photo appeared in October showing him with Víctor de Aldama, another of Koldo's key players.

If Koldo results in convictions, the reputational damage to Sánchez's government would be fatal: at the height of the pandemic, while that government presented itself as the country's protector, influential figures connected to it were allegedly cashing in on the sale of face masks.

But not even Koldo is on the same scale as this year's number one scandal, the protagonist of which is Óscar Sánchez Gil, the former head of Spain's national anti-fraud and money-laundering squad. Sánchez Gil and his girlfriend, also a police officer, were arrested in November after police found 20 million euros in cash stashed in the walls and ceiling of their home. Sánchez Gil is suspected of helping drug traffickers to avoid surveillance in Spanish ports, especially Algeciras, where authorities seized a record-breaking thirteen-tonne shipment of cocaine in October.

Sánchez Gil's arrest has dented the credibility of Spain's drug enforcement agencies at a time when they are dealing with an unprecedented influx of cocaine from Colombia, much of it sent via the Ecuadorian port city of Guayaquil. It makes the number one spot because the protagonist has been charged with precisely the activities it was his job to prevent: drug-trafficking, money-laundering and membership of a criminal organisation. That's hard to top.

Together, these three cases have made 2024 another bumper year for Spanish corruption (and I could have mentioned more, of course). But no doubt 2025 will be better.