The trial court makes its presence felt on November 20th by condemning the Attorney General

If the trial itself was already quite unusual, the sentencing of the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, to two years of disqualification from public office and the order to compensate Alberto González Amador—in other words, his institutional demise—has been even more surprising. The result is that the strategy of the advisor and strongman behind Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the controversial Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, has triumphed. Even Aznar dismissed Rodríguez for being too radical when he was spokesperson for his government. Rodríguez, aided by the press and the judiciary aligned with his views, has achieved the Attorney General's dismissal, and there is a possibility, following this sentence, that the trial of Ayuso's fraudulent partner will come to nothing if it is determined that their rights were violated.

The sentence was announced today, but not the full ruling. That is to say, the arguments of the five judges who voted in favor of the sentence, as well as those of the two judges who voted against it, are not yet known. This is important because in this trial there didn't seem to be much clear evidence, and a large part of the prosecution's case was based on the assumptions of the Civil Guard's Central Operative Unit (UCO) and the private plaintiffs. Without the justification for the sentence, it's difficult to speculate on what the judges consider proven. The journalists to whom the prosecutor allegedly leaked the email from Alberto González Amador's lawyer denied that he was the source. But the majority of the court didn't believe them, which is truly worrying.

Let's do a quick recap. It all started when a newspaper published, apparently at Rodríguez's behest, that the Prosecutor's Office had offered González Amador a plea deal regarding his tax fraud. The Attorney General, who claims to know nothing about it, requests information and is sent emails in which Ayuso's partner admits to the fraud and is the one requesting the deal. Based on this information, the Prosecutor's Office prepares a press release denying the alleged deal. Before that, however, other media outlets publish the lawyer's email. And the conflict erupts. The prosecutor is accused of having leaked the email, and this fact—which is indeed very serious if it occurred—ultimately justifies, after months of controversy and investigations, the prosecutor's prosecution and now his conviction.

All of this, of course, is part of the life-or-death struggle taking place in Madrid between the political, media, and judicial right and the government of Pedro Sánchez, which they are trying to bring down by any means possible, especially by using conservative judges most aligned with the positions of the People's Party and Vox. The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court became infamous during the trial of the Catalan independence leaders—the five judges who signed the sentence were connected to it, such as Manuel Marchena and Carmen Lamela—and are therefore known for their tendency to only listen to the Civil Guard witnesses and always seek the most conservative and inflexible interpretation. The politicization of the Supreme Court takes another step forward, while the public's trust in the impartiality of the justice system falls even further. It is unclear why the sentence was made public so quickly, without the written judgment having been drafted. It is curious that it coincides with the date of November 20th, thus allowing the debate to continue on everything that has never been truly reformed.