The appointment of the former minister as head of the new Democratic Memory prosecutor’s office against the criteria of the Fiscal Council adds to the rosary of controversies that marked her rise to the top of the judicial career
The appointment of Dolores Delgado to the Democratic Memory Chamber Prosecutor’s Office, a newly created position and key to the development of the law of the same name, has once again demonstrated the rejection that the figure of this veteran prosecutor in the National Court and Prime Minister of Justice of the Government of Pedro Sanchez awakens in a wide sector of the race, which has never hidden the stinging seeing her jump right out of Minister council to the dome of Public ministry in February 2020.
Ideological issues aside, the reality is that the forms used to reach the different destinations that he has held in recent years, both by the Socialist Executive and by his successor in office -whoever was his right hand and current attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz- may not have been the most orthodox. This has caused division and controversy within the race whenever her name has come up, placing her in the eye of the hurricane.
The last chapter has been this Thursday, in a Fiscal Council in which the majority of its members -members of the majority Association of Prosecutors and Salvador Viada as the sole representative of the Independent and Professional Association of Prosecutors- have abstained in protest against what they consider “manipulations” by García Ortiz to ensure that the charge fell on the former socialist minister, avoiding previously analyzing whether in her case she incurred a “conflict of interests”.
The member Viada alerted the Council in writing that the problem arose from Delgado’s sentimental relationship with whomever he was magistrate of the National audience Balthazar Garzon, head of a law firm and a foundation (FIGBAR) that “has an object and an activity that could conflict with the functions that the law attributes to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Democratic Memory Room.” Delgado’s reaction was to try to challenge this member: “Your animosity towards me compromises your impartiality”, pointed out the former attorney general in a letter sent to the same body.
His appointment, a very personal decision by García Ortiz, who is the one who proposes his appointment to the Government, has occurred with a little support from the advisory body, in which Delgado has only obtained the support of the two members of the Progressive Union -to which he belonged in his day-, of García himself and of the two natural members of the Council, who are appointed by the attorney general. “We deeply reject forms”said the president of the Association of Prosecutors, Cristina Dexeus, after hearing the news.
Arrival at the tax office
His appointment last September to the position he currently occupies, the Togada prosecutor’s office of the Supreme Court, was not peaceful either. His rise to the top of the prosecutor’s office was supported by the minority sector against another candidate who obtained six supports and who has appealed against the appointment before the Supreme Court.
Just a few months earlier, on June 21, 2022, the lack of parliamentary support forced the PSOE to withdraw a controversial amendment introduced in the reform of the Bankruptcy Law that sought to ensure by law a position to Delgado when he stepped down as attorney general.
The parliamentary maneuver drew strong criticism from the opposition and even from the government’s minority partner, United We Can, and other allies. Barely a month later, she resigned as attorney general due to health problems without her status as prosecutor of the Chamber being assured. The situation was amended last summer, with the appointment of her as robed prosecutor.
Villarejo’s shadow
All these episodes raised blisters among the most conservative prosecutors, who had already shown a strong discrepancy with Delgado since his arrival of the Attorney General, unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court for lack of suitability. Since she was chosen by Pedro Sánchez as his first Minister of Justice, she had been dragging the suspicions that the audios published in the media raised about her relationship with the investigated commissioner and today considered the brain of the “political police” José Manuel Villarejo .
Among the decisions that confronted her with the majority sentiment of the race, the so-called ‘Stampa case’ stands out, by not designating the prosecutor who gives the case its name, attached to the ‘Villarejo case’, for one of the eight permanent positions in Anti-Corruption, which It led to his expulsion from the cause at the end of 2020.
The explanations given on that occasion by the then head of the technical secretariat, today Attorney General García, raised suspicions about the role that he and his direct boss played around some investigative proceedings that were opened to this prosecutor and ended up being shelved. This file, which had been paralyzed up to two times by the Attorney General’s Office, was interpreted as an unprecedented interference by Delgado in this type of file.