Last Friday, January 19, Albert Carrillo, lawyer for Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, the eldest son of the former president of the Generalitat, received a very unusual call from court number 6 of the National Court, which is headed by the questioned judge Manuel García Castellón.
Pujol Ferrusola’s lawyer had requested four years earlier, in February 2020, the appearance of his client as a victim in the so-called Tándem case, the macro-cause arising from the investigation against Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo. A year after that first date, he had to remind the judge that he had not deigned to answer the initial request. He finally did so, in October 2021, rejecting the appearance, which motivated Carrillo to file an appeal in November 2021 before the same judge. So that Friday when he received the call from the court, he had been waiting for a response to this appeal for more than two years.
On the other end of the phone, a court official was interested in confirming that she had all the documents related to the matter.
Last Monday, the judge confirmed that he rejected it. Accompanying the order, the lawyer for the administration of justice settled the matter by pointing out that the appeal “had been involuntarily postponed due to the enormous volume of communications received daily in each of the pieces of this procedure.” A new example of that lackadaisical arrogance that is considered the result of supposed judicial independence.
And it may seem miraculous that the magistrate had been able to sign the rejection order in these frenetic days in which he is playing a game of chess with Congress over the negotiations for the approval in Congress of the new amnesty law, of which García Castellón carries out precise monitoring in order to be able to invalidate the effects of the pacts with resolutions in which extensions of the crimes excluded from the pacts between the PSOE and the pro-independence forces systematically emerge.
García Castellón was already controversial before the current conflict in which he has been involved on account of the amnesty in the Democratic Tsunami and CDR cases.
Two more of these instructions directed by the judge have been especially questioned, in one case by the Prosecutor’s Office, in another by broad sectors of public opinion. In addition to one against the former leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias, the so-called Dina case, which finally had to be archived.
The first, now closed, refers to the Kitchen case, the operation to cover up the PP corruption revealed in the Gürtel case, organized from the top of the Ministry of the Interior during the mandate of Mariano Rajoy.
The judge’s defenders argue that the investigation of the Kitchen case, in which fifteen years in prison are requested for the Minister of the Interior of the first Government of Mariano Rajoy, Jorge Fernández Díaz and as many for his second, Francisco Martínez, is the proof of its independence from the PP.
However, that investigation, like that of two other cases linked to the PP, Púnica and Lezo, were already open when the judge arrived at court number 6 of the National Court. In 2000, García Castellón was appointed by the government of José María Aznar as liaison judge to France, a position he subsequently held in Italy, in total a long period during which, according to critics, he spent more time in Madrid than in Paris or Rome. In 2017 he returned to the Court and at that time all those cases about PP corruption were already open and underway.
And upon his return, the magistrate adopted a series of decisions that, although supported by the Court, have been the cause of lively controversy that still continues. In addition to dismissing the cases against dozens of defendants, most of them PP officials, García Castellón closed the Kitchen case at the gates of summer, in a “surprising manner, as written in the opposition document of the Prosecutor’s Office,” on July 29, 2021, leaving out the former general secretary of the PP, former president of Castilla la Mancha and former Minister of Defense, Maria Dolores de Cospedal. The Prosecutor’s Office responded with unusual harshness to that decision.
I know of the fact that a few days ago the Courtroom forced the magistrate to reopen a case linked to Kitchen against Francisco Martínez using as the main indication his mention on eight occasions in Commissioner Villarejo’s agenda on that topic.
In a count carried out by La Vanguardia and published on July 12 of last year, in those agendas Cospedal and her closest environment appear referenced in 261 contacts (meetings, calls or messages) with her or her inner circle. The majority, 204, are with López del Hierro [Cospedal’s husband], whom she identifies as ILH. There are 28 direct contacts with Cospedal (MD, MDC or Cospe in the notes), although in reality there were more, since there are recordings of conversations without a trace in the agendas. There are another 29 contacts with her chief of staff, José Luis Ortiz (JL Ortiz), to whom the general secretary of the PP delegated, among other things, the payments to the commissioner.
In summary, those who question García Castellón’s instructions credit him with having surrounded them with great zeal to avoid greater harm to the conservative party, a kind of damage control accepting the impossibility of completely archiving the cases.
In the Kitchen case, there is the paradox that none of those finally accused – Jorge Fernández Díaz, Francisco Martínez and the police officers who complete the list – were officials of the PP of Rajoy and Cospedal, despite these being the main beneficiaries of the operations. of concealment and obstruction.
The second especially strange instruction is that of the Tándem case, which includes almost all the documentation linked to the Catalunya operation. The magistrate has opposed all attempts that have been made to open cases related to it. In this case with the support of the Prosecutor’s Office.
The magistrate maintains that he only investigates Villarejo when he acts “on behalf of private clients and in exchange for a price (…) in which information obtained in the police field is used”, that is, taking advantage of his status as a public official to profit. . He argued that it compares poorly with the Kitchen case itself, in which that condition is not met. In one fell swoop, this argument validates all the actions that Villarejo and the members of his group carried out as police officers against all the victims of Operation Catalunya.
Several of those affected have already attended his court, from the Pujols, to the Sumarroca family, Sandro Rosell. He has also rejected documentary and audio evidence provided by businessman Javier Pérez Dolset. Likewise, the magistrate keeps a large number of documents in the case secret, because they “affect State institutions or the State’s own security.” Again with the agreement of the anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office, although we will have to see what happens after the decision of the Catalan Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the possible illegal investigation of the former chief prosecutor of that community, revealed after a joint investigation by La Vanguardia and elDiario.es. on the 16th. If successful, the Catalunya operation could be a new cause of conflict between the public prosecution and the controversial magistrate of court 6 of the Audiencia.
