The Attorney General sitting in the dock at the Supreme Court is an unusual sight, almost unthinkable in any mature democracy. This week, Álvaro García Ortiz was tried for the alleged crime of revealing secrets following the leak of an email related to the tax fraud case against the partner of the Madrid regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Beyond the specific case, the image is extraordinarily symbolic. It is the State judging the State.
It is paradoxical that this is the same justice system that, for years, has allowed leaks of court cases to become a common tool in political warfare. It is routine to see personal data and information under seal appear in the media with precision without anyone lifting a finger. The Catalan independence movement knows this well: the most relevant details of the legal proceedings against Catalan political leaders have always been revealed by the press before they have been by the courts themselves. But nothing has ever happened. No investigation, no accountability, no consequences.
This impunity has consolidated a perverse model in which justice has become just another tool in the political arena. And now, the same machinery used against Catalan separatism has been redirected against Pedro Sánchez's government. What was once justified as a defense of Spanish unity now serves to undermine an executive branch elected by the people. When the state turns against itself, it is clear that it is suffering a profound institutional crisis.
The degradation of the Spanish political system is accelerating and seems to have no limits. The upper echelons of the judiciary have long since decided to wield de facto power, abandoning any pretense of neutrality and intervening shamelessly and unscrupulously in the political arena. José María Aznar's mantra, "Let them do what they can," has become dogma.
It has been very easy and convenient to look the other way when the victims of this lawfare The pro-independence leaders have been and continue to be the targets, but this same approach is applied to anyone who is a nuisance. Now, the enemy is Pedro Sánchez and his government, and the Attorney General is a prime target, requiring a direct attack on the credibility of the government that appointed him.
When the judiciary becomes a political actor, the democratic system falters. Nothing is more corrosive than justice at the service of a partisan cause. Recent experience has shown that those who make the judiciary uncomfortable...status quoWhether it's the separatists, certain progressive judges, or now the Attorney General, they all end up being prosecuted and tried. At this point, it's a pattern that can no longer be disguised: the State has become an instrument for preserving the interests of one group, not the whole.
The García Ortiz case also has a disturbing undertone. If it were truly true that he committed an irregularity, the same logic would demand action against the hundreds of leaks that fill newspaper pages with sensitive material every week. But no one does, because the aim is not to uphold the law, but to use it as a weapon. In this chess game, removing the Attorney General is just one more step toward checkmating the Prime Minister.
Politics conducted through the judicial system is a sophisticated form of authoritarianism. And when this practice takes root in the heart of the state, it ceases to be an anomaly and becomes the system itself. As it has always done, the right wing manipulates the justice system, but often, from progressive positions, there is a naive belief that institutions are neutral.
Fifty years after the death of the dictator Franco, we have enough perspective to conclude that the Transition did not work the miracle that was predicted for decades. In the case of the judiciary, this is very clear: those who the day before handed down sentences in the name of the Generalissimo, the next day, with the same pen, signed sentences in the name of His Majesty the King. This lack of regeneration within the judicial leadership, which did occur to some extent in the army, perpetuated and reinforced a biased model that is still perceptible today.
When the state attacks the state, democratic collapse is closer. But we have also seen that this doesn't generate any particular concern among most people, who accept it uncritically while the unstoppable growth of the far right becomes normalized. Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.
