The Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, Félix Bolaños, has once again emphasized today the Government’s efforts to defend the “independence” and “integrity” of judges and prosecutors. His words, in an official speech, have greater depth than a mere defense of the Rule of Law, following the attacks on the judiciary coming from political leaders, mainly from pro-independence parties.

The judicial and fiscal career has focused its attention on the Executive of Pedro Sánchez for having agreed with these parties, mainly Junts, an investiture agreement in which the way was opened to investigate ‘lawfare’ or, in other words, a alleged judicial persecution against political leaders for ideological or political motivations.

The words of the Junts spokespersons in the Congress and Senate, Miriam Nogueras and Josep Lluis Cleries, directly pointing out corrupt judges as members of ‘lawfare’ have pushed the Minister of Justice to come out publicly defending judicial independence and respect for power judicial.

At the ceremony to hand over the offices of the LXI promotion of the tax career, Bolaños took advantage of his speech to once again insist on the Government’s position on the matter: “The government will always defend independence and integrity wherever it comes from. This “The Government will always defend judges, magistrates and prosecutors and their integrity because that is defending the rule of law,” he noted.

In his speech, the minister stressed that the “playing field is the institutions and we must all maintain the institutions and loyalty to the democratic system, all of us without exception.”

The deep discomfort experienced last week by the judiciary led the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, to call off the scheduled meeting with Bolaños for “unforeseen” reasons. Although ministerial sources clarified that the meeting was only postponed to this Tuesday the 19th, for now this date has not been closed. Both parties are trying to reach a new date.

For his part, the State Attorney General, Álvaro García, gave a speech without going into much depth, despite the criticism leveled against him from part of the prosecutor’s career for not defending more clearly the prosecutors of the process that were being subjected to strong criticism. “The constitutional mission of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is fundamental for our rule of law. We establish ourselves as guarantors of legality and defenders of the rights of citizens,” he warned the new prosecutors.

García has defended the role of the prosecutor to defend constitutional principles: “strict compliance with legality as an expression of the sovereign popular will; impartiality, acting rightly stripped of any prejudice; unity of action and hierarchical dependence, as a tool to guarantee legal security and equality of all citizens before the law”.

The head of the prosecutor’s career has insisted that the defense of the rule of law “is an indispensable mission of prosecutors, it is a daily, continuous task, and we carry it out where it corresponds to prosecutors, in the exercise of jurisdiction and before the courts”.

And he added: “Outside the law, outside the institutions there is nothing, that is why it is so important to strengthen and guard them, that is why institutional loyalty is so important as a unifying element for those of us who understand that the social and democratic state of law is the best possible way of coexistence, as it has been for more than 45 years.

García has been proposed again by the Government after Sánchez’s inauguration as president. He had been in office for a year after the dismissal of Dolores Delgado for personal reasons. The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) issued a report unfavorable to his appointment with the support of the conservative bloc, considering him “unsuitable” for the position due to the “spurious” use of the institution.