Isabel Díaz Ayuso appeared this Friday amid great anticipation for what she had to say, the day after the announcement of the conviction of the State Attorney General in a case that directly concerns her. The ruling had enormous political and media repercussions. The Supreme Court resolution represents a victory for her because the story has prevailed according to which Álvaro García Ortiz, in connivance with President Pedro Sánchez, maneuvered against her.
None of this was proven in the trial, even though it ended in a conviction for the prosecutor. García Ortiz was suspected of having leaked a document in which the lawyer of the president’s boyfriend, Alberto González Amador, acknowledged two tax crimes that, together, amounted to more than 300,000 euros. “It is not the State Attorney General, but Pedro Sánchez who is sitting in the dock,” Ayuso said in an appearance before the media in which he admitted no questions.
The president read a very institutional statement on the teleprompter, from which she did not deviate even a millimeter. If people expected her to be euphoric, they were disappointed. Ayuso presented herself as contained, serious, not at all prey to her emotions. His message is that he defeated Sánchez: “He himself said that the prosecutor depended on him. And the prosecutor was convicted. He himself said that the prosecutor should apologize while together they erased the entire digital device with the aim of hindering judicial work.”
Ayuso and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the most important advisor in the Council of Ministers, emphasized from the beginning that the author of the leak was Álvaro García Ortiz. The trial lacked conclusive evidence (the smoking gun that every researcher searches for), but the history of the PP of Madrid also prevailed, a very powerful current within the main party of the Spanish right.
Journalists questioned during two-week hearings in the Supreme Court denied having received this information from him. Some even showed chats showing that they had access to the information before García Ortiz. When questioned by the defence, the head of the UCO was unmasked and admitted that he had not investigated the communications of more than 500 people in the justice system who could have had the same information at the same time as him. None of this resonated with the five of the seven magistrates who agreed to convict him of revealing secrets.
Up to five cases of alleged collusion between the prosecutor and Sánchez have been mentioned, for which there is no evidence. “They operated in coordination and were convicted,” he said, adding that the president may be preparing “something crazy” for the next few days.
Behind all the communicative and political scaffolding of the case is Rodríguez, who has made the crisis his own from the beginning. It thus went from being an individual issue, in this case the president’s partner, to something that concerned an entire government, none other than that of Madrid. He tried to prevail by leaking that the prosecution had offered González Amador a deal and then withdrew it due to “orders from above.” He aimed, without needing to say it, at Sánchez. The advisor, former minister of José María Aznar, had to admit that this information was false, his supposition. In reality, it was the boyfriend’s lawyer who said that his client had committed these two crimes and that he was willing to reach an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office in order to reduce the sentence. The prosecution later released a statement qualifying this. The case turned into a huge snowball.
He took the place of the attorney general, who was disqualified, and obscured, in a certain way, the merit of the matter: González Amador’s problems with the Treasury.
