Two hundred people gathered, on Saturday, Constitution Day, in front of the City of Justice in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, to protest the conviction of the State Prosecutor, considering it to represent “a judicial coup that violates the rule of law” and insisting on the slogan of the call: “We neither accept nor respect this ruling.”
The ceremony was presided over by a huge republican flag spread out on the sidewalk, accompanied by others from the Canary Islands with the seven green stars and a third from Palestine. Old leaders and activists from political groups such as the PSOE or Nueva Canarias, as well as representatives of unions, social entities and citizens, gathered there without recording any incident and with the secret presence of only two units of the National Police.
Fifteen days after the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court announced the meaning of the ruling, the ruling is still unknown, namely the reasons that prompted the Court to sentence the State Prosecutor, Álvaro García Ortiz, to a fine of 7,200 euros for the crime of disclosing confidential data, to deprive him of special eligibility for office for two years, and to pay the corresponding procedural costs, including the costs of the private prosecution. In addition, the ruling included compensation for Alberto Gonzalez Amador’s liability in the amount of 10,000 euros “for moral damages.”
This delay led to increased discontent among the organizers of this gathering, which was evident not only in the statement, but also in the groups after it was read. Historic union leader, retired justice official and former Podemos MP Meri Pita was in charge of reading the statement. “A judgment without facts or foundations is not good judgment: it is an act of will lacking motive, a conclusion without thought,” Pieta said.
Moreover, from the ruling until now, a series of “anomalies” have emerged highlighted by participants, such as the fact that three of the five judges who voted in favor of conviction – Andrés Martínez Arrieta, Antonio del Moral, and Juan Ramón Perdugo – were paid by the Madrid Bar Association, a common accusation in this process, during their deliberations.
“But the connection between these judges and the accusations is deeper,” the statement states: Antonio del Moral has been co-directing the doctoral theses of two lawyers on the accusations for years, and on November 18, during an ICAM session, Judge Andrés Martínez Arrieta – president of the chamber and speaker – announced to witnesses: “I am finished because I must issue a state prosecutor’s ruling.” This phrase, in the opinion of the organizers of this gathering, “reveals information protected by the confidentiality of the deliberations in Article 233 of the Law on the Protection of Journalists: that the deliberations did indeed have a decision-making structure and the meaning of the ruling was a conviction. The judge who was convicted for ‘disclosing reserved data’ publicly revealed the secrets of the deliberations. For this reason he was prosecuted for the same crime” by Los Comuns.
The organizers of Saturday’s demonstration in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria see this as evidence of lawfare, that is, the abject use of the law as a political weapon, to dismiss the public prosecutor through a flawed process. “A ruling without a ruling uses terms that do not appear in the criminal genre. Judges collect accusations during deliberation. Judges direct the defendants’ theses and receive rewards from the accusations. A court president reveals the secrets of deliberation. And all of this without the presence, after fifteen days, of the ruling that should justify the conviction.”
The demonstrators demanded the immediate publication of the full sentence: “We want to know the proven facts and the legal grounds that support the conviction. We want to know why the ruling uses “reserved data” when Article 417.1 of the Penal Code requires “secrets” or “information that should not be disclosed.” We want to know what rule established the duty of confidentiality in the memorandum issued by the Madrid Provincial Prosecutor’s Office dated March 14, 2024, since the type of criminal law requires that information “shall not be disclosed” through prior regulation.
In addition, they demand “the disqualification of the five judges who voted in favor of conviction due to loss of objective impartiality and public disclosure of trading secrets,” as well as a retrial before a different court “as appropriate when impartiality is compromised.”
In his opinion, “what is at stake is not only the conviction of the Attorney General. Rather, the survival of the rule of law is at stake.”