Álvaro García Ortiz submitted his resignation as prosecutor on Monday after the Supreme Court sentenced him to two years in prison on November 20 for the crime of disclosing secrets against Alberto González Amador, a friend of Madrid President Isabel Díaz Ayuso. This ruling made him the first head of the Public Ministry to be convicted in Spain, and prompted him to abandon the position he had attained as the “right hand” of his immediate predecessor, former Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado.
“It is the deep respect for judicial decisions and the will – always present in my mandate – to protect the Spanish Public Prosecutor’s Office and its prosecutors that determine my decision, even without waiting to know the motive behind the ruling, to submit my resignation from the position of Public Prosecutor,” he said in a letter sent to the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts.
In the letter, which Europa Press was able to access, García Ortiz stated that “this action is due not only to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but to all Spanish citizens.” He asserts that “once the ruling is known, it is time to abandon the performance of this great responsibility.”
A seven-judge court with a conservative majority, and with a dissenting vote from two progressive justices, put an end to a term that had been moribund since five of those justices decided on October 16, 2024 to prosecute García Ortiz over the leak that González Amador’s defense had offered to the prosecutor’s office to confess to the two tax crimes he was investigating in exchange for avoiding prison.
Since then, many voices inside and outside the Attorney General’s Office have called for his resignation, something García Ortiz has always ruled out because he believes it is his duty to defend the institution and its members against what he warned was a “hoax”: Published at 9:29 p.m. On March 13, 2024 in the newspaper “El Mundo” it was said that it was the Public Prosecutor’s Office that sought to reach an agreement with Díaz Ayuso’s friend.
Already during the trial, he maintained that if he had acted in this way – collecting “emails” between the prosecutor in the case and the defense of González Amador at night and almost in the early morning, publishing a press release at 10:22 on March 14 in which he explained that the initiative had come from the businessman and that he was willing to confess – it was with the aim of conveying the truth in the face of what he considered a smear campaign coming from the community. Madrid.
The government, which maintained its support for García Ortiz throughout the entire procedure, spoke through the head of government, Pedro Sanchez, to ratify it. In compliance with the ruling, Moncloa announced that she was grooming her successor.
Thus ends a case of great legal and political impact, which has generated continuous erosion not only for García Ortiz – on a professional and personal level – but also for the Public Ministry, thus filling the deadlock that he inherited from the first day of his term.
He was appointed to the position on July 19, 2022, after Delgado announced his resignation for health reasons following back surgery. He came to head the Prosecutor’s Office from its Technical Secretariat, where he served as Delgado’s “right-hand man” and a position that elevated him to the highest echelon of the prosecutor’s career.
Judicial settings
One of the first decisions taken by García Ortiz was to promote Delgado to the position of Prosecutor of the Court, appointed to the Military Chamber of the TS, against the criteria of the majority of the Finance Council, which selected the former Prosecutor of the Court of Accounts Luis Rueda for his extensive experience in military law.
Rueda appealed this decision to the TS, which agreed with him and annulled Delgado’s appointment. The Supreme Court was stern in its ruling that Garcia Ortiz caused a “shift of power.”
The Court relied on García Ortiz’s own words during the Public Prosecutor’s Council, when he argued that “everyone who was a Public Prosecutor should not return to the profession of Public Prosecutor in a category below the highest”, acknowledging that although the Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office did not provide for an automatic promotion in this sense, he was willing to correct that.
In a subsequent decision, the Court also annulled Delgado’s appointment as Prosecutor of Democratic Memory and Human Rights, leaving the matter in the hands of the Finance Council to examine a possible incompatibility with the position due to her being an associate of former National Court judge Baltasar Garzón. The Advisory Board decided that there was no such conflict, so she was reappointed.
The “Delgado Affair” and other appointments brought criticism for García Ortiz from the Association of Public Prosecutors (AF) – the majority in the prosecutorial profession – and from the Professional and Independent Association of Public Prosecutors (APIF), who accused him, as they did with Delgado, of favoring members of the Progressive Union of Public Prosecutors (UPF), to which they both belong.
Another “unique” decision
In this context, the former General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) declared – with a conservative majority – that García Ortiz was “unsuitable” to continue in his position, within the framework of its renewal process, which was completed on December 27, 2023.
The CGPJ concluded that García Ortiz used his powers “falsely,” referring to his policy of discretionary appointments and the harsh sentence that TS handed down to Delgado, as well as noting that he imposed false standards, as with the “only yes is yes” law, and his “failure” to defend prosecutors in the “trial” from charges of “lawfare.”
García Ortiz, while appearing before the Congressional Justice Committee required to formalize its renewal, accused the CGPJ of acting as a “court of honor.”
Internal fracture
Shortly after, there was a clash with the House of Representatives of the Chamber over the “democratic tsunami” and the amnesty law, contradictions that led to the formation of the two Houses of Representatives.
The majority of the members of the Council of Prosecutors of the First Criminal Division decided to annul the report prepared by his colleague Álvaro Redondo calling for the investigation of former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont on charges of terrorism for his alleged involvement in the riots launched by the Independence Party after the “trials” ruling.
Despite this, the report ended up in the hands of the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Ángeles Sánchez Conde, who stated, contrary to the majority opinion, that there was insufficient evidence to investigate Puigdemont for terrorism.
The Attorney General’s Office had a similar path when it came to creating a position with pardons. By a close vote, the Council of Public Prosecutors decided that the law should apply to embezzlement, insubordination and public disorder in “the operation.” Once again, García Ortiz agreed to have Sánchez Conde prepare the relevant reports, thus excluding the four plaintiffs from the “proceeding.”
The most recent controversy was precisely that related to the Gonzalez Amador case, which deepened the rift in the Attorney General’s Office to the point that APIF was one of the popular accusations against García Ortiz. And also the testimony of the Chief Public Prosecutor in Madrid, Almudena Lastra, who announced that she suspected from the beginning that there were leaks.
In parallel, there were signs of support for García Ortiz. He received many offers to help him secure the €150,000 that TS initially demanded and the trial began with the support of his men at the exit of Fortuny’s headquarters. Hundreds of people, including Delgado, gathered on Sunday in front of the Supreme Court to express their rejection of the ruling.