It is so common to hear complaints about the arbitrariness of governments when making certain economic decisions, especially related to decisions on taxation (almost always to raise it, it is true), incentives or regulations on activity, that it would seem which is the only relevant area of ??the functioning of the institutions of the so-called State of Law relevant to business and money. Spain is a good example, the fierce opposition to the Government of Pedro Sánchez finds fertile ground in its economic measures and the press gives relevance to the shocks that the measures can have on the profit and loss accounts of companies and banks.
But isn’t the action of other powers of the State, such as law enforcement or justice, relevant to economic activity? When considering an investment, don’t public security or legal security feature high on the list of conditions for making a favorable decision? In recent times in Spain, this last aspect has been restricted exclusively because it comes from the Government, although ultimately, its changes in criteria or the implementation of new rules has been made through the mandatory approval in a Parliament elected by citizens in a democratic procedure. Something that, for now, no one has dared to question.
But what about justice? Does the functioning of the judiciary offer more legal certainty, predictability in decisions, clarity in procedures, review of errors, purification of incompetent or directly corrupt members? It can be absolutely assured that it works better than the rest of the State’s powers.
Reading the pages of the press, a foreign investor might think that strange things happen in Spanish justice. At the outset, let’s stick to the area linked to politics and the crisis of the Catalan process. The reader will decide whether or not to link them to the so-called operation Catalonia. Now let’s talk about the simple operation of justice.
A businessman (Sandro Rosell) remains in pre-trial detention almost indefinitely, for two years, whom, when the case comes to trial, the court in charge already releases before issuing a sentence; then I absolve him. And the judge responsible for this excess (Carmen Lamela) ascends almost immediately from the position at the National Court to the Supreme Court.
A son of the Pujol family, Oleguer Pujol, received, like 31,500 other taxpayers, in the tax amnesty of the Minister of Finance of Mariano Rajoy, Cristóbal Montoro, is denounced by the police for having participated in a financial operation with Banco Santander – exactly the same as many other people and other banks, before and after – and a case is opened against him that lasts for ten years. They search his house at an untimely hour, with the children sitting at the breakfast table, they take all kinds of precautionary measures against him, and ten years later the judge of the National Court investigating the case, Santiago Pedraz, removes himself from the matter with an interlocutory of only four paragraphs, insufficient to fill a page in which it is read: “Despite the diligence carried out, there is no basis for even appreciating an indication of a crime, and what was provided were mere suspicions, not fit to follow a criminal procedure”. surprising
The now well-known judge Manuel García-Castellón, also of the National Court, discovers four years after investigating the Democratic Tsunami case that a person who died of a heart attack during the traffic collapse that occurred at the airport del Prat has criminal consequences for the organizers of the protest equivalent to planting a bomb Etarra style.
Just a few more or less relevant examples of an operation that has shown that a sector of the police leadership, some magistrate, also from the National Court (of course!), who participated in lunches and celebrations – and that later has rejected resources from employers who considered themselves affected by the misdeeds of their colleagues with guns – along with the system’s indifference, they act out of control, trample on elementary rights, answer to no one and have political protection from the main party of the opposition
Obviously, these behaviors cannot be generalized to the whole of justice, but the most mind-boggling thing is that a sector of the political class has decided that the authors of these procedural misdemeanors cannot be criticized. Hiding behind the idea of ??independence at least incompetence, if not arbitrariness or directly partiality and abuse of authority. Jordi Pujol’s decision, in 1994, as president of the Generalitat, to get rid of what was probably the most corrupt judge in democracy, Lluís Pascual Estevill, comes to mind: he sent him to nothing less than the CGPJ, the governing body of judges. Nobody tweeted, neither government, nor judges. Exactly the same as now, with the silence of the judicial associations that have not said anything, after superactive months at the expense of the amnesty, after learning that the chief prosecutor of Catalonia, Martín Rodríguez Sol, was investigated for having denounced the falsehoods published in a newspaper.
Returning to the supposed foreign investor, reading all these episodes would not lead one to think that Spain is the paradise of legal security and judicial guarantees. Rather, on the contrary, he would discover that in the country there is a special court, the National Court, with jurisdiction over almost anything that seems interesting and an easy trigger, to order searches, arrests, seizures, even if they then go to water and which is a direct inheritance from a Franco tribunal. One of those anomalies that would be good to review now that fundamental changes are being addressed.
