Hi, my name is Nicholas Casey and I'm a staff writer at the New York Times magazine

based in Madrid.

There's a man whose name almost everyone knows in Spain, and that man just happens to be

a spy.

His influence reaches back to Francisco Franco, the former nationalist dictator whose

secret police was where he started his career in the 1970s.

He worked as an intelligence officer for years, until he got busted for money laundering

in 2017.

When the police raided his home, they found something that would rattle Spanish society

for years to come.

A huge trove of tapes.

What do you think?

I think it's pretty easy to come inside of these articles.

Thousands of hours of secret audio recordings of Spain's most powerful people spanning decades.

There's a recording of a judge talking about granting a favor to a well-known arms trafficker.

There's another recording involving the former lover of the ex-King of Spain, Juan Carlos,

talking about King's alleged secret bank accounts in Switzerland.

These tapes have caused scandal after scandal in Spain, and the man pressing the record

button was Jose Manuel Biedejo, also known here as the King of the Seuers.

Since the time of Franco who took power in the era of Hitler and Mussolini, Spaniards

have whispered about this concept of sewers.

They don't mean literal drainage.

...