Who is José Luis Calama, the judge who has charged Zapatero?

Madrid / BarcelonaIt is not easy to find a photo of him, nor on Google, but his discretion contrasts with the magnitude of the major cases he usually handles. José Luis Calama Teixeira, the judge who has indicted former president Zapatero for the Plus Ultra case, has been part of the Spanish judicial career for three decades and since 2018 has served as a magistrate of the National High Court, where he has stood out for the investigation of espionage against various members of the Spanish government with Pegasus.

A methodical judge, in his early days he worked in investigating courts in Sigüenza, Barcelona, and Valladolid, before moving in 1996 to number 15 in Madrid. It was eight years ago when he replaced Fernando Andreu at the National High Court, where he inherited the case concerning the purchase of Banco Popular by Santander for one euro, in which possible crimes of fraud and accounting falsification are being investigated.

The Zapatero case is not the magistrate's first decision to capture the media spotlight. In September 2021, for example, he refused to ban a demonstration in tribute to the ETA terrorist Henri Parot, for which right-wing parties, victims' associations, and police unions had protested vehemently. Calama concluded that it was not proven that the glorification of terrorism could be committed at the event, but that did not prevent the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, from accusing him of being "complicit" in the "crimes" he believed would be committed during the march.

The Pegasus case

In July 2023, the judge's name once again made headlines when he took on the instruction of the case concerning the cyberespionage on the mobile phones of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, and the ministers of Defense, Margarita Robles; Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and Agriculture, Luis Planas. The infiltration with Pegasus pointed to Morocco, but Calama ended up filing the case twice –the latter, in January of this year– due to Israel's lack of cooperation.

The magistrate had sent rogatory commissions to Israel requesting information about the NSO Group company, owner of the spy software, and also to be able to take a statement from the company's CEO. The fact that the Israeli state has its international cooperation request "obstructed" prevents, for the moment, further investigation into "the authorship of the investigated facts", the judge concluded.