The Comuns requested the extension of the complaint they filed with the Supreme Court for revealing secrets against the president of the court who convicted the Attorney General, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, and request, among other things, that TVE requests the complete recordings of the intervention of magistrate Juan Ramón Berdugo during the ICAM. Berdugo is another Supreme Court judge who received a stipend from the Madrid Bar Association the week Álvaro García Ortiz’s conviction was handed down and who told students the court took a weekend to reflect.
In the document, presented through their MEP Jaume Asens, they claim that when Arrieta publicly declared on November 18 that he was going to “put” the sentence against the prosecutor at the time when the court was supposed to be deliberating “it was not a hypothetical comment, but the real externalization of the result of a deliberation already substantially concluded.” The conviction was only known – without conviction on December 9 – on November 20: “I was not making a simple joke, but rather I was announcing a decision already adopted within the Chamber, as was later confirmed by the Disposition of November 20, which advances the decision without a signed sentence”, they defend.
Thus, the brief continues, the provision is an “additional objective indication that the accused has revealed information” and would imply a revelation of the state of the deliberations prohibited by article 233 of the Organic Law of the Judicial Power, which declares secret the deliberations and votes of the judicial bodies. They also believe that their behavior complies with article 417 of the Penal Code.
The Comuns also show that when magistrate Juan Ramón Berdugo also spoke about the deliberation during the ICAM – accusation in the trial against the Attorney General – he confirms that the Supreme Court was in full deliberation and reinforces the thesis that Arrieta’s sentence was not an “isolated comment”. In this audio, presented by TVE in the program La Hora de la 1, the judge declared to the students: “Tomorrow we deliberate, we have left the weekend of reflection”. At the end of the speech, amid the laughter of the audience, made up of all the lawyers belonging to the ex officio team, Judge Berdugo thanked his audience for their attention and closed his speech: “It was a pleasure, and you can also say that I gave you the conference between deliberation and deliberation. Tomorrow we continue.”
The Commons affirm that these statements “do not subjectively extend the subject of the complaint” to other magistrates, but that they “reinforce the context in which the revelation attributed to Arrieta took place, giving it greater plausibility and greater criminal seriousness”. Finally, they refer to the request of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) to Margaret Satterthwaite, United Nations special rapporteur for the independence of judges and lawyers, to intervene in the “irregularities” of the trial against García Ortiz. According to the Comuns, this is an “external, institutional and independent indication” that Arrieta’s behavior “cannot be trivialized or understood as a simple anecdote, but as a serious institutional anomaly.”
For this reason, they ask the Supreme Court to demand that RTVE provide a complete copy of the audios and videos broadcast by the program “La Hora de La 1” relating to the intervention of Mr. Juan Ramón Berdugo on November 19, 2025 in the course organized by ICAM, that the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) has the right to send to the court a complete copy of the communication sent on December 5, 2025 to the Rapporteur United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, as well as the public communiqué in which the said document is reported 4.
Likewise, it is requested that an agreement be reached to send the full testimony of the complaint, as well as the extension and the resolutions issued in this procedure, to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Ms. Margaret Satterthwaite, “so that its incorporation into the information file opened on the basis of the document of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors can be evaluated, in accordance with the principle of collaboration with international human rights organizations ratified by Spain”.
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