Miguel Servetus, the Spanish theologian and scientist who was burned at the stake by the puritan Calvin in 16th-century Geneva (Protestant) for defending freedom of thought, believed that each one is as God has made him, but he also maintained – an unforgivable heresy. – that we can all become a different person depending on our will.
The idea that the true identity is written by the acts, instead of the sayings, explains well the political substratum with which the fate of the former president of the Junta de Andalucía, José Antonio Griñán, has been resolved, convicted of two crimes –prevarication and embezzlement– and, after a pirouette that has lasted for months, exempted days ago by the Seville Court of the sentence that this same institution imposed on him three and a half years ago, in November 2019.
Griñán, minister with Felipe González, regional councilor with Manuel Chaves and president of the federal PSOE between 2012 and 2014, has spent his entire political life –forty of his current seventy-seven years– preaching equality policies, but in the face of judicial reality (a conviction for political corruption) has chosen to escape from prison a path that, although it has proved successful for its interests, denotes the arbitrariness of justice to apply its own resolutions when those affected are public heroes, in contrast to the extreme rigor that it demonstrates with common prisoners or with public positions of inferior relevance.
Born into a family immersed in the Franco regime, the former president of the Junta, who published some memoirs a year ago in which he questions judicial independence and denies, presenting himself as the victim of an alleged right-wing conspiracy, the proven facts before successive courts, he opted for militancy in the PSOE in his youth, following in the footsteps of other members of his generation, who professed left-wing ideas even though they came from families and lineages intertwined with the dictatorial regime.
The exercise of power, first in secondary chancelleries and later in magistracies with the maximum purple, however, gradually curtailed this youthful trend in favor of generational rebellion. The dissidence thus became an organic and institutional command.
And, over the years, the mistakes made – in this case we are talking about crimes – changed into self-justifications. Absolutism was distilled until it became a crepuscular victimhood. And, after all, in the psychological denial of the evidence. Griñán has escaped prison, unlike all the others convicted of the ERE cause, not so much for suffering from cancer – other imprisoned politicians suffer similar health problems – but because of the singular criteria, largely contradictory, that the three judges who have revoked his sentence and the Prosecutor’s Office, dependent on the Government, have applied in his case.
Is the suspension of Griñán’s prison sentence legal? Definitely. Is it comparable to similar cases? Absolutely. Is there room for debate as to whether there has been favorable treatment with the former president of the Board? The facts point precisely in this direction. Equal treatment, not only in relation to the rest of the common prisoners, but with respect to the other socialists imprisoned by the ERE, the largest case of corruption in the history of Andalusia, has not existed.
It is enough to compare the situation of the former Deputy Minister of Employment of the Board, the socialist Agustín Barberá, and that of Griñán to discover how the judicial criterion in the first case is inflexible and, in the second, lax. The judges decided that Barberá should go to jail despite having metastasized cancer, but they have exempted Griñán, after receiving radiotherapy treatment, without his disease, fortunately, being in the same serious phase.
Both politicians suffer from a “very serious” and “incurable” disease, which is the assumption that the Criminal Code includes to suspend their sentence. On equal footing, both should be in jail or still free. But the Court of Seville, with the collaboration of the Public Ministry, has resolved something different in favor of one and another to the detriment of the other. Barberá is already a prisoner, while Griñán has five years of freedom ahead of him.
This privilege has not been enjoyed by the others convicted in the case, as is the case with the former Employment Minister and former PSOE Secretary of Seville, José Antonio Viera, who a prison surveillance court granted third degree five months later a few weeks ago. to voluntarily enter the Huelva prison for having cancer. Barberá lacks freedom. Viera is at his house. And Griñán has not entered jail, nor will he enter.
That a convicted person tries to avoid imprisonment by all means at his disposal falls within the natural logic of things. That Justice make an exception for humanitarian causes is a possibility included in the legislation. Both circumstances are present in these two cases, but the judicial treatment has been absolutely disparate and, without a doubt, striking.
The prosecution and the court in charge of making the last decision have behaved differently depending on who was convicted. Except in the case of Viera, who accepted his sentence upon entering prison, although he has served less than a semester of the seven years in prison to which he was punished, Barberá and Griñán find themselves in a more than comparable trance.
Therefore, it cannot be argued that there are different circumstances in his situation. The former Deputy Minister of Employment requested in November 2022, invoking article 80.4 of the Penal Code, the suspension of his prison sentence. The Prosecutor’s Office opposed his claim and the Court dismissed it with the thesis that it is an exceptional measure and that, although he suffers from a serious and incurable illness, the doctrine of the Supreme Court obliges us to consider other parallel issues, such as the “dangerousness criminal of the subject” and the “society’s right to its own security”.
Neither of these extremes, however, are mentioned in the order that saves Griñán from imprisonment. Barberá, according to the coroner, suffers from an advanced-stage disease (with metastasis) whose only treatment consists of ingesting a drug orally with periodic hospital check-ups, potentially problematic in the event of an emergency while in prison. The expert who examined his file told the court that he did not have scientific evidence of the incidence that his stay in prison would have on his ailment, but he did warn of the negative side effects of drug treatment.
Despite this ruling, the judges considered that the former Deputy Minister of Employment “does not suffer from a serious illness whose permanence in prison poses a serious risk to his life” and denied his plea on the grounds that his ailment can be treated in prison, the same as happens daily in the case of “other convicts in similar situations.”
In Griñán’s order, all these factors, objectively concurrent, disappear from the arguments of the judges. They’re not here. The Prosecutor’s Office is in favor of suspending the sentence. And the court omits any reference to balancing the right to integrity of the accused with the hypothetical dangerousness of the convicted person. This is a significant omission because neither of the two politicians can reoffend, being disabled. They are not a social threat.
The Court has taken months to resolve the case of Griñán because it was not satisfied with the literal tenor of the first forensic reports, which avoided being categorical when evaluating the possible medical condition that his admission to prison would entail, thus leaving without technical support a ruling that It was probably already intuited favorable to the wishes of the former president of the Board.
The court decided to demand more specificity from the expert and obtained a report that “discourages” (a subjective judgment, not objective) the entry into prison of Griñán and, therefore, allows the judges to suspend the sentence for a period of five years, although without justifying the reasons for such a period or motivating it based on the treatment required by your illness.
“In cases like the present, referring to medical issues” – write the magistrates in the order that de facto annuls the sentence of the former president – “this court is subject to the technical criteria of the expert in the matter whose knowledge is essential to be able to resolve , and this room can only agree to the suspension of the sentence for a period of five years.
The law grants judges the non-delegable ability to discretionally decide the fate of a prisoner with cancer, but without incurring in arbitrariness. In the case of Agustín Barberá, the Court of Seville exercises this legal prerogative exclusively and without nuances, decreeing the indefinite imprisonment of the former Socialist Employment Minister.
When considering Griñán’s request, on the other hand, he makes an automatic transfer of the subjective criteria of the coroner –to whom the law does not grant that power, exclusive to judges– and exempts him from the sentence without considering whether his treatment can be carried out in jail, aware that neither the Public Prosecutor’s Office nor the prosecution – the PP – were going to question such a resolution.
The law is identical, the condemnation of both socialist politicians equivalent and their illness similar. The judicial treatment, however, has been objectively unequal. “In this world there is no truth, all are vain simulations and passing shadows,” wrote the heretic Servetus.
