The Supreme Court has summoned Popular Party senator José Manuel Baltar at 10 a.m. on December 19 to testify voluntarily for an alleged crime against road safety, thus giving him a second chance after he did not attend the appearance scheduled for this Tuesday alleging health reasons of his lawyer.
The investigator of the case, Judge Ana Ferrer, had offered Baltar to give a voluntary statement at 10:00 a.m. on December 12, but the one who was president of the PP of Ourense until last October has not gone to the high court. According to legal sources consulted by Europa Press, he has requested a postponement arguing that it was impossible for his lawyer to attend because he was ill.
“Given his willingness to respond to the judicial call,” Ferrer has set a new date for the voluntary declaration, next December 19 at the same time, as indicated in a ruling from this same Tuesday to which this news agency has had access.
The objective of this voluntary declaration was to determine the viability of the investigations before making the proper request to the Senate to formally proceed against the ‘popular’ politician.
The Supreme Court opened the case last November, after the Criminal Chamber received the rapid trial testimony and the urgent proceedings sent by the courts of Zamora and Puebla de Sanabria, initiated by virtue of a report from the Civil Guard by the commission of an alleged crime against road safety.
Once it was confirmed that Baltar is a senator in the current legislature, the Supreme Court requested a report from the Prosecutor’s Office, which requested that the jurisdiction of the Second Chamber be declared, as well as that the aforementioned request be made.
Before the case reached the Supreme Court, the Prosecutor’s Office had presented an indictment against Baltar, considering him the author of a crime against road safety, in the form of driving motor vehicles at a speed higher than that legally permitted in article 379.1 of the Code. Penal.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested a sentence of six months of fine at a daily rate of 10 euros, with the subsidiary personal liability that in case of non-payment establishes article 53 of the Penal Code and 1 year and 1 day of deprivation of the right to drive motor vehicles and mopeds.
The investigating court, in accordance with the provisions of article 800.1 of the Criminal Procedure Law, had agreed to open the oral trial against Baltar for facts supposedly constituting a crime of speed driving significantly higher than Regulation LO 15/2007.
But, having accredited the status of senator appointed by the Parliament of Galicia, the Criminal Court Number 1 of Zamora, by order dated September 13, 2023, agreed to the inhibition and referral of the proceedings to the Supreme Court. At 215 KM/H
The events date back to Sunday, April 23, when Baltar was intercepted, according to the final report of the Civil Traffic Guard, at 215 kilometers per hour on the A-52, as it passed through Asturianos, at the wheel of a car from the Ourense Provincial Council. Three months later, Baltar was elected senator by regional appointment at the proposal of the PP, on July 28.
Barely a month had passed since Baltar resigned from continuing as head of the Provincial Council after 11 years. After failing to achieve an absolute majority in the provincial corporation in the May 28 elections, he thus sought to make it easier for his party to retain it, as he himself stated.
Baltar’s resignation allowed a change of cycle in the provincial institution and in the PP in Ourense, after more than three decades linked to his last name – first at the hands of his father, José Luis Baltar, and then under his mandate – -. Now the mayor of O Pereiro de Aguiar, Luis Menor, from the trusted orbit of the party’s Galician leadership, presides over the provincial institution and the manager of the PP in Ourense.
