"I had not heard from anyone, neither from above nor below nor from the right nor from the left; no one spoke to me about that Kitchen operation," the former Interior Minister declared to the court. The PP's former number two at Interior denies that Kitchen existed and says there was only an "intelligence operation." Jorge Fernández Díaz, Interior Minister during Mariano Rajoy's first term, stated this Thursday at the Kitchen trial that he never knew about that operation until media publications began two years after it started. The statement contradicts what his number two had just declared in the appearance that preceded his, when Francisco Martínez alluded to an exchange with the Interior Minister on July 13, 2013 about the existence of an informant in Bárcenas's circle and which included Fernández Díaz himself sharing the identity of the Bárcenas family's driver with him.