The Supreme Court annuls the appointment of Dolores Delgado and one of the judges accuses the court of relying on "conjectures"

The ruling with which the Supreme Court annuls the appointment of Dolores Delgado as prosecutor of the Democratic Memory room does not question that she could run for the position and that she does not have sufficient merits to hold it, but it does appreciate “indications” that her work could clash with the professional activity of her husband, Baltasar Garzón, by having a foundation specialized in the same subject. The sentence has a dissenting vote from Judge Pilar Teso who accuses her colleagues of challenging Delgado in a “preventive” manner based on “conjectures and suppositions.”

An association of prosecutors appealed the appointment of the former minister and former attorney general as delegate of Democratic Memory. An appointment that came after her promotion to the highest category of courtroom prosecutor before the military jurisdiction, a decision that has also been annulled by the Supreme Court.

In the case of his promotion, the judges understood that the attorney general had incurred a misuse of power by having made it clear that he was not making the decision out of a need in the public prosecutor’s office, but rather because of his belief that attorneys general had to acquire the maximum category of the Public Ministry when leaving the position.

In this second case, the contentious-administrative chamber takes another path. She does not question either Delgado’s “deservingness” to apply for the position, nor that she could run or that, finally, Álvaro García Ortiz has shown an “intimate friendship” with her for proposing her appointment. But they do understand that the Fiscal Council had the right to examine whether he incurs a prohibition to practice in the field of historical memory because his partner, the lawyer and former judge Baltasar Garzón, presides over a foundation dedicated to that judicial field.

For the majority of the court, Garzón’s activity as president of the FIBGAR foundation “can be considered commercial in nature,” as can his work as a lawyer. And that, they add, “significantly coincides with the subject matter of the Prosecutor’s Office for which Ms. Delgado García has been appointed: human rights and the defense of the victims of her violation.” The facts, adds the Supreme Court, “highlighted indications that Ms. Delgado García could be affected by this prohibition.”

“It cannot be resolved just in case”

The Supreme Court’s decision returns the ball of Delgado’s appointment to the Fiscal Council, which with this endorsement in hand will be able to thoroughly examine whether or not Delgado incurs this prohibition. The ruling has the dissenting vote of Judge Pilar Teso, who has already spoken out against other resolutions of her court that annul discretionary appointments, and who accuses her colleagues of acting “just in case” and based on “mere conjectures.” and assumptions.”

For Teso “it seems risky” to affirm that the president of a non-profit foundation, as Garzón claims in FIBGAR, “fits that description” made by the Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office on commercial activities that can hinder the work of a prosecutor. Its territorial scope, of an international nature, “far exceeds the national scope of the Prosecutor’s Office” and its objectives only coincide “in part.”

That Garzón is a lawyer, he adds, is not enough to prevent Delgado from practicing in the field of historical memory. And he directly accuses his colleagues of being preventively removing the former minister from related cases. “The incompatibility that is resolved by abstention cannot be resolved before it occurs. Just in case,” he says.

In this case, for the judge, “the preventive application of a possible incompatibility is especially serious.” The rest of the room, Teso understands, is cutting off the “professional promotion” of a prosecutor, a career that “cannot be truncated by mere conjectures and suppositions.”