The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, struggled on Thursday to disentangle himself from the tentacles of the funding scandal that has pinned him down since the start of the year by admitting he had handled it badly.
He said his mistake was to have been duped into trusting – and supporting – his party's jailed former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas. He flatly denied that he or other leaders of his conservative People's party (PP) had received illegal payments.
Bárcenas, who faces trial for bribery, tax evasion and other offences, has told a judge he accepted millions in cash donations from construction firms, some of which he passed on to senior PP officials, including Rajoy, in the form of bonuses.
The prime minister's confession – though of ingenuousness, rather than dishonesty – represented a dramatic change of approach after months of evasion. But forced before parliament by the threat of a motion of censure, he claimed that supporting Bárcenas at an early stage of the scandal was his "entire role in the story". He said: "I made the mistake of continuing to trust someone whom we now know did not deserve it."
Sweeping aside the prime minister's version, the Socialist leader, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba read out to him some of the text messages he had exchanged with the PP's former treasurer: "I shall always be there", "Luis, we are doing what we can" and "Luis, be strong".
Those, he said, were not the exchanges "of a prime minister with a criminal" (the word Rajoy had used to describe Bárcenas). They were those of "a confederate with someone who can put him in a tight spot".
Rajoy's surprise admission of mistakes will inevitably raise doubts about his judgment on other issues. But, perhaps more seriously for his political future, it makes him a hostage to whatever details have yet to come out.
Bárcenas has shown himself a master of media manipulation, carefully timing the leak of compromising evidence. There is a widespread belief that he has yet to make his most damaging allegations.
The prime minister tried to bolster his position by pointing to signs of recovery in the economy, notably a drop in unemployment in the second quarter. In an attempt to put opposition deputies on the defensive, he claimed that their concentration on the PP funding scandal was damaging the country's reputation abroad and thus its chances of emerging from a two-year recession.
Dismissing the Socialists' censure motion threat as "puerile", Rajoy said: "I came [to parliament] to halt the erosion of Spain's image."
The prime minister said he had always declared his full income to the tax authorities and that all the PP's payments to its employees – including bonuses – were noted in its accounts. It was up to individual officials of the party to declare their earnings.
Rajoy said his government had introduced several measures to tackle corruption. And he promised that next month he would present what he called a national plan for democratic regeneration.
It emerged in January that Bárcenas had hidden up to €48m (£41m) in Swiss bank accounts. He left his post in 2009, but the PP continued to provide him with financial support.
In his reply, Rubalcaba stressed the length of Bárcenas's involvement with the PP. It was impossible to believe that Rajoy, who has been the leader of the party since 2004 and a member of its executive since 1989, "knew nothing of the illegal funding of the PP for 20 years", he said.
The PP has been fending off claims of undisclosed donations since 2009. But it was not until this year that Rajoy was personally tainted.
In January, the newspaper El País published documents purporting to show the PP's accounting over the 10 years to 2009. Among other things, they indicated that Rajoy had received salary top-ups from Bárcenas.