The prosecutor who agreed not to seize the ballot boxes during the November 9th elections

BarcelonaOn Tuesday, the Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, appointed prosecutor Emilio Sánchez Ulled (Lleida, 1966), who is currently serving on special services in the European Union, to fill the newly created position of prosecutor for crimes against public administration. It was a controversial appointment because the members of the majority Association of Prosecutors abstained, expressing their opposition to the potential invasion of powers by the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office.

Sánchez Ulled, who opted for the public prosecutor's office because he couldn't see himself working in a law firm serving clients, led the prosecution in two of the most important political trials in recent years in Catalonia: the Palau de la Música case and the November 9th referendum, which ended with a two-year ban for Mas, along with former ministers Joana Ortega and Irene Rigau.

The November 9th trial, which paradoxically took place before the 2017 referendum, placed him in the crosshairs of the independence movement. During that time, he filed away on a shelf in his office in the City of Justice the anonymous letters he received calling him a fascist or a torturer. At the trial, Sánchez Ulled sought to emphasize that what was being judged was whether or not the government had disobeyed the Constitutional Court, and not the legitimacy of the referendum. "This trial is also about democracy," he emphasized in one of his most famous quotes. In this regard, the prosecutor recalled that he was on duty in Barcelona on November 9th and that, despite the complaints filed, he ruled not to remove the ballot boxes because the events needed to be investigated "calmly and rigorously."

He also denied that he acted at the behest of Mariano Rajoy's government. He comes from a working-class family and has always declared himself left-wing. "You're not rich, don't lose sight of that," he tells himself, according to sources close to him. When he became president of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors, of which he is still a member, he sent a letter to the members in which he pledged to work "in defense of the only ones who need to be defended, who are the weakest." While at the University of Lleida, with some friends, he created the Revolutionary Group of Charming People, whose purpose was to annoy the fascist students.