“I believe in justice and truth”

“If I am here as State Attorney General, it is because I believe in justice and in the institutions that comprise it. I believe in the rule of law, in the independence of the Judiciary, in the principles of legality and impartiality. And, of course, also in the truth.” With these words, the head of the Public Ministry, Álvaro García Ortiz, has defended his presence on the solemn act of opening of the judicial year on Friday after the judicial and political right has claimed his veto in this start of the course in the courts that King Felipe VI presides every year.

García Ortiz, who is about to sit on the bench to be tried for revelation of secrets, has gone to the Supreme Court fulfilling the legal mandate that regulates the participation of the Head of the Public Ministry in this act to account for the memory of the institution. His intervention, however, has taken place in an environment of enormous tension after the most conservative judicial and fiscal associations and the vowels of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) chosen at the initiative of the PP claimed that it did not go. The leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has not been present in the act by considering that the presence of García Ortiz is a “provocation.”

García Ortiz has faced his speech waiting for the Supreme Court to open oral trial against him accused of filtering the mail in which the couple of Isabel Díaz Ayuso confessed author of two fiscal crimes. In the same space was the Criminal Chamber that will judge it. Before, the judge who instructs the case against him, Angel Hurtado, will have to decide if he suspends him from the position in a precautionary way, as requested by the association of prosecutors he exercises as an accusation in the case.

In his speech, the attorney general has said that he is aware of the “unique circumstances” of his speech as a result of his procedural situation. And he has reiterated that it is an “honor” to participate in a “regulated” act and chaired by the head of the State as the law provides.

The main associations of the judicial right stated in a statement this Thursday that their assistance “constitutes an act of contempt for the basic principles of the rule of law and the head of the State” and asked him not to attend “out of respect” the king and those who integrate the judicial and fiscal careers. The vowels, on the other hand, claimed the president of the organ, Isabel Perelló, the veto of García Ortiz given the “current circumstances”, in reference to their processing.

García Ortiz has not referred to these requests and has limited himself to claiming the “maximum respect” to the function of the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office and the work of all prosecutors. “I firmly believe in the Fiscal Ministry as the strong institution that is. Solid, reliable, that vertebra a country and that guarantees the fulfillment of the law. An energetic, active institution that does not succumb to the onslaught or attacks of the criminals,” he said.

In his speech, the Attorney General has also referred to the wave of fires that Spain has ravaged during this summer and that has swept more than 400,000 hectares. García Ortiz has recognized the “limited role” of criminal law before this phenomenon and has called to act with “prudence and rigor against simplistic solutions.” “We must avoid the risk of criminalization of the rural world and certain groups. We cannot reduce the very complex problem of forest fires to the hunting of man, to criminal repression,” he added.

Likewise, the Head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office has loaded against the denialist discourses on the sexist violence that raise formations of extreme right as Vox and has affirmed that “it is difficult to deny an evidence that accumulates 2,840,838 complaints filed” since the entry into force of the law of 2004. Only during the past year 200,000 complaints were interposed for gender violence, García Ortiz has detailed of violence about women registered and monitoring these complaints. And that of those almost three million, the percentage of false complaints is veryy. The average since 2009 is 0.0082%.