Petro's happy days in L'Empordà with his Catalan friends who now put him in trouble

These moments in Petro's life are not well known. For 10 years they spent the end of the year in a farmhouse in L'Empordà, a region of Catalonia with a Pyrenean mountain range and a splendid exit to the Mediterranean. Truman Capote wrote in cold blood on the Costa Brava, in front of some pines and a crystalline sea that watched from the window of his residence. Those who saw Gustavo Petro walk through this dream place say he was happy. Often taciturn and stealthy, he looked relaxed, as if the invisible weight that loads on his shoulders evaporates. He went without escorts and chatted with new friends in the face of a rice with tomato stir -fry, sausage and seafood. The sun shone with all its power at noon and in the afternoon the section blew, a cold wind that comes from the north. The December 31 menu consisted of a cream of prawns and a roast beef. On January 2, Xavier Vendrell and Alcazaban Canelones. The now president, his wife, Verónica Alcocer, and his daughter Antonella wore gifts for his Catalan friends. Petro liked to hear stories about anarchism in Barcelona and became interested in the independence referendum of 2017. Although he never positioned himself equivocally. One of the organizers of that illegal vote was Vendrell, who in his youth had belonged to a Catalan terrorist group. There were similarities with Petro, who played in the guerrillas of the M-19. The conversations were pleasant. Several had graduated in ESADE, a business management school with prestige. Petro disliked that one of them, at the time of the desktop, said: «To this side to talk about politics.» To the other women and children. The comment was controversial and sometimes those who witnessed have remembered. In any case, Petro and Alcocer felt free in that environment, protected, in a bubble. Nobody wanted to kill Petro in Europe. No one knew him. He read in the afternoon while his wife was going shopping. Antonella walked alone on the street, a new experience in her life. There his friendship with Grau, Vendrell and Eva Ferrer, whom he met when he met with the mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias was sealed. The first two gumped when he was mayor of Bogotá and went to ask for some permits for the university residences that they built in the city. He found in them a complicity, in personal and political life, which he has not had with many people. The three granted Colombian citizenship shortly after being president. This Catalan circle has rivaled others during their presidency. Petro's old guard, the one that accompanies him with her senator time and all investigated paramilitarism, which was a frontal way of playing life, they believe that the Spaniards take advantage of to do business. The most leftist government also sees them as intruders. Grau is suspicious to Armando Benedetti, the president's main advisor at the moment. Distrust is mutual. Eva Ferrer was an intimate friend of the First Lady and was appointed in the Ministry of Children. Ferrer, more formed, had the task of giving her a more theoretical and less intuitive feminism. Indirectly, that Ministry was under the control of Alcocer, to which everyone gives immense power. The first lady and Ferrer ended up in very bad terms. Ferrer ended up resigning after feeling cornered by Agmeth Escaf, friend of the childhood of the first lady, and other collaborators who wanted to take his place. Ferrer was not defended by Grau, very close to Alcocer. The businessman did not want to lose the favor of the first lady. Nor for Vendrell, who gets along with the president. Grau, single, has a lot of free time and is often available. Not so Vendrell, who has a family and travels a lot between Barcelona and Bogotá. It has now been the one who has put the president in trouble and not precisely in a good time. Petro lives his most aciagos days. To the crisis for his confrontation with Donald Trump on account of the deportees, he added the chaotic Council of Television Ministers, where all the fractures of the government remained in light. This week he had begun to fall attention to that moment that is possibly a historical document of Colombian politics. However, a scandal has appeared on an attempt to infiltrate money in Petro's campaign. Vendrell was the intermediary. If that money had ended in the campaign accounts, it would have annihilated its presidency.Gustavo Petro during his campaign closure in Zipaquirá, Colombia, on May 22, 2022.iván Valencia The entrepreneur says he did not know who Diego Marín was, known as Dad Smurf. It was a smuggler with many crimes behind him, who is now imprisoned in Portugal. The campaign researchers told him to return the money, about $ 120,000. It was the first of five other payments for the same amount. Petro asked Augusto Rodríguez to make sure the money returned to its owner, to avoid future scandals. Petro has developed a sixth sense to realize traps that put his enemies. At that time he also avoided meeting two foreigners who wanted to donate money for their political purpose. They were actually two undercover agents of the DEA who simulated being drug traffickers. Augusto Rodríguez asked to record the time of return to Vendrell. That video supposedly exists, but is in the hands of a hacker, also Spanish. He has not come to public light. The tangle has put Vendrell in the foreground. Those who do not want well tell the president who did not do well to trust this group of foreigners. His presence in Colombia has been surrounded by controversy. The empty chair has documented what he understands as bad management of public resources to which they have had access. The media ensures that Vendrell used the public office given by the President in the Administrative Unit of Solidarity Organizations (UAOS) to finance projects in which he has private interests. They insist on this thesis with a series of emails to those who had access: “This investigation reveals the content of the hundreds of mails because they show that for a decade sold and Grau have used their political support and friendship with the presidential family to try business and develop projects with public entities and powerful contractors in the country. ”Petro often feels alone. They are surrounded by «friends.» These friends tell at the feasts of the Alta Sociedad de Bogotá who have access to the president, who have lunch in Palace, who write to him by Line. They show chats, photos passing their arm on top. They know that they also have to win Alcocer, without it there is no way to climb. Those friends later ask for meetings, contracts, charges. Petro often speaks of interested people. It distrusts almost everyone. They have betrayed him a lot. And he likes to say that power is a poison. Friends want contracts, handle money, place people in positions. «Friends.»