Civil war rhetoric, now against the prosecutor

In this dual and perpetually confrontational Spain, everything is liable to become a weapon. It is the stubborn and atavistic civil war mentality. The Spanish right gives no quarter. If anyone has completely undermined the spirit of consensus of the Transition, it is the competitive PP-Vox alliance, each trying to pinpoint the most alleged traitors to the nation. The latest episode involves the Attorney General's Office. With the downfall of Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz, the choice of Pedro Sánchez's government has already awakened the right's belligerent instincts. La Moncloa has proposed as a replacement... progressive feminist Teresa Peramato (Salamanca, 1962), member of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors, an association he chaired from 2019 to 2021.

Whether by chance or design, the Supreme Court's ruling against García Ortiz was made public on November 20th, a day with murky resonance, and on November 25th, an ideologically antagonistic one. Both Spains seem to spare neither symbolic weight nor cultural warfare. Despite the call from Sumar's partners to mobilize against the Supreme Court, a call the Spanish government has not endorsed, there is one side, from Spain, that is clearly and explicitly more belligerent: that of a right wing that knows how to wield the implacable lawfare Without hesitation or dissimulation. It acts, of course, from the comfort of having its levers of power in control.

When the socialist left quietly joined the legal persecution of the pro-independence movement, it either refused to see or failed to see that sooner or later the fury would fall upon it. What fury? What levers of power? Well, the harmonious and conspiratorial combination of three entities: the patriotic police, a high judiciary that is implacable against those it considers political enemies, and a media arm that constantly amplifies and prepares the ground. This last arm, incidentally, has in recent weeks opened a new and shameful war by targeting journalists. Now, for alleged preferential treatment of the children of journalists such as Xabier Fortes (RTVE), Esther Palomera (Eldiario.es) or Isaiah Lafuente (Cadena SER).

But returning to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the opposition parties, the PP and Vox, are now beginning to dig deep to delegitimize the future new Attorney General. To begin with, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has made a rather unsubtle request that the report from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) endorsing the government's candidate for Attorney General be changed from advisory to binding. Given the difficulty of questioning the chosen candidate's professional qualifications, the focus has shifted to the selection process itself, which, almost as an afterthought, casts doubt on the suitability of the choice. Peramato is a career prosecutor with 35 years of experience and a long and undeniably strong track record, particularly in the fight against gender violence and in favor of gender equality. But the PP needs to sow doubt at all costs: "If the president [Pedro Sánchez] asks this new Attorney General to commit a crime, will she do it?" asked Ester Muñoz, the PP's spokesperson in Congress. It seems so, anything goes. The battle will continue.