Madrid’s Red faced security chiefs are asking themselves just how a baby-faced, 20-year-old university student could bluff his way into the coronation of the new king, pass himself off as a government adviser to reportedly broker a lucrative business deal, and avoid traffic jams by flashing a fake police light?
The answer, disturbingly enough, is that he did it by falsifying police and secret service documents and pretending to hold several government and other official posts, according to Spain’s national police.
But now the game is up as the student in question, Francisco Nicolás Gómez Iglesias, was arrested having quickly gained prominence as the country’s most notorious gate-crasher.
And as he appeared in court last week judge Mercedes Pérez Barrios was as incredulous at the extent of Mr. Gómez Iglesias’s double life.
In her report, she wrote that she could “not understand how a young man of 20, using only his own word and apparently under his own identity, could have access to government conferences, places and events without his behaviour causing any alarm.”
One of the most worrying security breaches occurred on June 19, when Mr. Gómez Iglesias was among the guests at the royal palace and actually shook the hand of the new king, Felipe VI.
But rather than spending most of his time on university benches, Mr. Gómez Iglesias preferred to lunch with top business executives and politicians, even joining them in the V.I.P. box of the Real Madrid football team’s Bernabéu stadium. He also moonlighted as an advisor to the government, and sometimes as an agent of the secret service, according to El Confidencial, the newspaper that first reported the case. He also managed to receive 25,000 euros from a businessman in return for helping facilitate a property deal, acting as a government adviser, according to the judge’s report.
Mr. Gómez Iglesias, known to his friends as Frankie, has now been dubbed “Little Nicolás” by the Spanish news media, in reference to a series of French novels about a mischievous schoolboy.
Attempts by the press to speak to the young man have been unsuccessful and he has made no public statement since his release from custody, on bail, last Friday. Spanish news media say, however,that his family was shocked by the arrest, claiming that he had somehow been set up.
Mr. Gómez Iglesias’s gate-crashing exploits came to an end when he tried unsuccessfully to attend a party at the American Embassy, as well as further his relationship with Spain’s royal household. The Spanish police then started an investigation, leading to his arrest last week.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/45331/
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