Restless gowns

That a judge would admit as a popular prosecutor in a judicial process an association supposedly formed by animals seems like a bad joke and an exhibition of arrogance. This is the case of the National Court magistrate María Tardón, who has decided to investigate the massive entry of immigrants into Ceuta on July 30th and 31st, because she thinks those events may constitute an attack against the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the Spanish state. Against the unity of Spain, that is. We already know what this is about because it has also been verbalized by patriotic luminaries like Abascal and Ayuso, and even the always helpless Feijóo: it is about prosecuting Pedro Sánchez for high treason. And to achieve this, any support is good, even that of an association called Zeolandia, with a board of directors supposedly formed by four dogs and a cat. On its very website, it appears that the entity behind it is the Liberum association, formed by jurists close —oh surprise— to the Spanish nationalist far-right who have already appeared as a popular prosecutor in other proceedings against the PSOE and/or the government of Spain. The animal joke has the touch of the foolish humor of the stale right. But the objective is no joke: the Spanish right has long been longing to do with Sánchez as Bolsonaro and company did with Lula in Brazil. That is to say, to take a president to prison, dragged by an avalanche of accusations in which lies, half-truths, proven facts, and the pressure capacity of a power environment that treats the state as its own property are mixed. In her writing, Magistrate Tardón speaks of “criminal conduct that has not only had as a direct and immediate victim the city of Ceuta and its inhabitants, but the Kingdom of Spain itself, since it could constitute an attack against national sovereignty, the independence and stability of the State, its territorial integrity, national defense, foreign security, and the stability of our rule of law”. These are very strong words. The supposed entity of cats and dogs has filed a contentious-administrative appeal against the government of Spain for “deliberate omission of preventive security measures in Ceuta” and “concealment of information”.

The Supreme Court is not left behind either, as it has provisionally suspended the so-called “net law” because, according to the magistrates, it represents “a real and serious danger” of conditioning the elections, and also “an irreversible damage” to the rule of law and democracy. Wow, these defenders of democracy. For the moment, they have suspended the right to vote of thousands of citizens, and they have done so by crying out against a law that the PP was in favor of in 2023. But nothing that is said today is valid tomorrow. There are only centers of power anxious to regain total control of the institutions, and judges and prosecutors eager to collaborate with them. They claim they do it for Spain, but where they say “Spain” one must read “the money”. Then everything becomes quite a bit clearer.