From swords to robes

During the years of the democratic transition, we feared the coup temptations of an army rooted in Francoist culture. It was logical and we were not mistaken when the farce of 23-F occurred, with the parade of tanks in Valencia and the assault on the Congress of Deputies by Colonel Tejero. A strange night, in which the myth was invented of a monarch who had saved democracy by sending the military back to their barracks. Surely reality was not so simple and even less so clear. But the socialist Ministry of Defense under Narcís Serra arrived, who with salary increases, decorations, and bouquets of flowers managed to defuse the warlike ardor of some still very stale "milicos" . Instead, the transition was not carried out thoroughly in a judiciary formed by Francoists and their disciples, waiting for biology and generational renewal to perform a modernizing function that never arrived.In the judicial field, there has rather been an inverse transition towards making politics and exercising power roles. It is a world too endogamous, classist, and retrograde for it to be aired out, at least at the high levels of the career. Another thing is the ordinary judges, deprived of means to efficiently carry out their important function. In the high spheres, there is a world of favors, of stale lineages, and of an extremely corporate spirit, and, why not say it, with a desire to act politically. Not only are we where we were, but with the general reactionary and post-democratic wave, this power has recovered its oldest version. In Spain, judges are those who best understood José María Aznar's enigmatic phrase from a couple of years ago: “El que pueda hacer, que haga”.The judiciary is today the authentic Trojan horse against democratic institutions and culture. The judicial elite no longer settles for exercising its role as the third power of the state, but rather establishes supremacy and control over others. And not only that: it becomes the necessary ally of the extreme right, creating the conditions for it to come to power. It judicializes political life by intervening in an interested and arbitrary manner, raises incredible cases, issues convictions without any basis or proof, and dismisses and delays what could affect political acolytes. Perjury no longer seems an exceptional behavior but rather the norm. The affiliated media will then do the corresponding justifying work. I remember that a few years ago, at a conference in Buenos Aires, the former vice-president of Bolivia and theorist of the Latin American left, Álvaro García Linera, warned that today's coups d'etat are carried out by the judiciary and not the army: Latin American military personnel no longer do training stays in American academies, but rather it is the judges who do immersions, with the same function, in some North American universities.

The trial in the Supreme Court against the Attorney General represented a frontal attack, a real assault on one of the State's institutions from within the judicial power itself. It is an unprecedented event that has evidenced the partisan function of the judiciary in Spain, as a political instrument against the governmental majority. A very singular legal reasoning, made after the announcement of the conviction. But everything goes, in the strategic harassment of Pedro Sánchez. His leadership against the warlike arrogance of Trump and the Israeli genocide is already taking its toll. The U.S. Department of National Security has collaborated in the investigation of Zapatero, and it cannot be a coincidence that the leaders of the Spanish right and far-right have visited the U.S. embassy in recent days. The attack on the president's family is unheard of because Judge Peinado establishes the principle of presumption of guilt. It doesn't matter if nothing remains of it later: the important thing is to overact and generate, by accumulation, a certain state of mind.This that is now known as lawfare–the interested political use of law and justice– is not new, but in recent decades it has gained unusual importance in Spain and worldwide. The populist right has placed the judiciary at its service everywhere. Cases are opened for political reasons, processed politically, and with the agenda that suits to inflict political damage. When necessary, diligence is extreme and it coincides, coincidentally, with electoral processes or with dates that cover up other cases that need to be hidden. Absolute impunity. The so-called Zapatero case already seems like checkmate for the progressive government: the icon of the left dragged through the mud seems difficult to overcome. In general, to me and many people, it seems an ethical and moral indecency that former presidents create consultancies, even if what costs to differentiate from influence peddling is called lobbying.What need do they have for it? The truth, however, is that all previous presidents have done it, but the judiciary believes that, with great fanfare, it is only necessary to go against Zapatero. Why?The formal discourse of “respect” towards judicial initiatives and decisions has ceased to be sustainable.