María Gámez resigned on Wednesday from her position as director of the Civil Guard to defend her honor and that of the armed institute as a result of the judicial imputation of her husband, Juan Carlos Martínez, in the case of the Andalusian EROs . The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, gave it as an example of “democratic prophylaxis”, and the resigned director assured that it was the only decision she could take to protect her family.
Gámez’s decision makes us wonder where we should set the bar for this prophylaxis. In the event that a high political official has a son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother, husband or wife who are involved in a court case, he would be required to resign and leave’ n at your house? The exemplary manner with which one wants to act on many occasions in Spanish public life sets limits that deserve a more serene reflection. The parties that are in opposition take any excuse to demand resignations in these cases of family relationships and then, when they are in government, they are the first to try to justify them. In the end, public opinion is also merciless, and the level of demand for terminations is ever higher. It is worth remembering that imputation does not yet mean judicial conviction.
If we apply this system of measurement, from now on any high public official must not only be responsible for his performance and that of his team, but may also be affected by what some of his direct relatives do. Last December, Ignacio Manrique de Lara, husband of the first vice-president of the central government, Nadia Calviño, had to resign from his position as coordinator of Commercial Strategy in National Heritage, despite having obtained the best score in the public call. The campaign he was the subject of to occupy this position led him to resign to avoid the erosion of his wife.
It is the law of the pendulum that sometimes makes us go from one extreme to the other, and it lacks common sense to understand that the relatives of politicians and policies also have the right to have their lives.
