Who is José Luis Calama, the judge who has charged Zapatero?
The magistrate, of discreet demeanor, investigated the espionage on Pedro Sánchez with Pegasus
BarcelonaIt is not easy to find a photo of him, nor on Google, but his discretion contrasts with the magnitude of the macro-cases he usually has in hand. José Luis Calama Teixeira, the judge who has indicted former president Zapatero for the Plus Ultra case, has been in the Spanish judicial career for three decades and since 2018 has been a magistrate at the National High Court, where he has stood out for the investigation of espionage against several members of the Spanish government with Pegasus.
A methodical judge, in his early days he served in the investigating courts of Sigüenza, Barcelona, and Valladolid, before moving in 1996 to number 15 in Madrid. It was eight years ago that 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 first decision by the magistrate to attract media attention. In September 2021, for example, he refused to ban a demonstration in tribute to the ETA member Henri Parot, for which right-wing parties, victims' associations, and police unions had been outraged. Calama concluded that it was not proven that the glorification of terrorism could occur 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 at the march.
The Pegasus case
In July 2023, the judge's name once again made headlines when he took charge of the investigation into the cyberespionage case targeting 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 last time in January of this year – due to Israel's lack of cooperation. the last time, in January of this year– due to Israel's lack of cooperation.
The magistrate had sent rogatory commissions to Morocco requesting information about the NSO Group company, owner of the spyware, 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, continuing to investigate "the authorship of the investigated facts", concluded the judge.
