Teresa Peramato’s proposal as the next state attorney general was welcomed with satisfaction by the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF), the association she presides over, and with more caution by the two associations critical of the Government, the Association of Prosecutors (AF) and the Independent Professional Association of Prosecutors (APIF). However, all the associations agree in recognizing Peramato’s career, a very unusual consensus in the tax career, deeply divided after the trial that led to the disqualification of Álvaro García Ortiz, who resigned this Monday after being sentenced to two years of disqualification for the crime of revealing secrets linked to the entrepreneur Alberto González Amador, partner of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and tried for fraud at the Treasury.
Peramato’s CV, with 35 years of career – 20 more than what the law requires to be a public prosecutor – and chamber prosecutor (the highest category) since 2021, is indisputable, and the associations underline this after the appointment proposal announced on Tuesday by the Government. Cristina Dexeus, president of the AF, the majority association of the breed, acknowledged in statements to EL PAÍS that Peramato has a “remarkable” career to which “there is nothing to object to”. Members of the AF voted a few months ago against the appointment of Peramato as head of the criminal section of the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office, although that vote was read as a rejection of any name deemed linked to García Ortiz and the UPF, which this association accused during his mandate of exclusively promoting prosecutors linked to the UPF.
For Dexeus, the election of Peramato marks in this sense “a continuous line”, but hopes that it will serve to “recover the image of impartiality” of the public prosecutor and “the prestige lost due to the actions and tenure” of García Ortiz and “his strategy of confrontation with the Supreme Court during the investigation and trial” of the case for revealing secrets for which he was convicted. “We will see if Peramato will be able to manage the institution well, returning to the behaviors necessary to make people assume that the Prosecutor’s Office is an institution at the service of all Spaniards”.
The association to which the future Attorney General belongs praised her “proven technical solvency and professional rigor”. In a statement, the UPF highlighted that Peramato “embodies the best virtues” of the tax career with more than 35 years of public service and is “widely respected by the judiciary, the legal profession, legal practitioners and the tax career itself”. “His appointment represents the election of a public prosecutor of proven technical solvency and a career characterized by professional rigor, institutional sense and the defense of fundamental rights”. Likewise, they say he has “exemplary” experience and a firm commitment to “defending the dignity of those most in need of protection” and highlight his work in “protecting victims, particularly victims of gender violence.”
The UPF trusts that Peramato will contribute to “strengthening a modern, autonomous Prosecutor’s Office fully committed to the values of the rule of law” at a time when, they underline, “the career of the Prosecutor’s Office is experiencing delicate moments that require calm leadership, legal solvency and a profound awareness of the role of the Prosecutor’s Office in the defense of legality and citizens’ rights”.
The APIF, the third association in the running and which was part of the popular prosecution in the trial against García Ortiz, welcomed it with more caution. “In our opinion, having been president of the UPF, the Government sought a profile very similar to that of Álvaro García Ortiz, so we will have to wait for him to develop his functions as attorney general,” says its president, Miguel Pallarés.
