The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid has forced the community chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso to provide the reports of the inspections carried out by the local police in nursing homes in the region during covid. These are over 200 direct testimonies from the hardest days of the pandemic, between March and August 2020, when thousands of residents died due to lack of hospital care, events which several courts are investigating.
Beyond the tragedy mentioned in the documents, the Superior’s decision represents a push for transparency in public administrations. This essential principle of democracy, respect for which is required by a 2013 state regulation, was developed by the Community of Madrid in a law approved by the Regional Assembly in 2019, four months before Ayuso won the presidency and succeeded his party colleague Ángel Garrido. With the absolute majority obtained in her second mandate, the popular leader carried out a reform through which she linked the Transparency Council to the regional government, which has since appointed its president and sole member. Until then it was an independent body linked to the Assembly, where the formations agreed on the names of its then three members.
It was the pre-reform Council that forced the Regional Executive to provide the inspection reports to a former socialist deputy who had requested them from the Administration, which was reluctant to hand them over. The executive has appealed in court against the transparency body’s decision. With an inexplicable feint if not out of a desire to judicialize political life and despite having tried to prevent the publication of the documents in the courts, the Ayuso government now ensures that it has been allowing access to them for some time while keeping the litigation open in the courts. But transparency is not a gift from rulers but a right of citizens. And the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the Court of Madrid was severe in dismantling in the sentence the maneuvers with which the Administration tried to avoid the application of the law. And it does so by discarding evasive arguments such as that the procedural documentation is very voluminous or that there is an obligation to anonymize the documents.
Only transparency guarantees control of the actions of public officials. The expansion of its mechanisms strengthens democracy. On the other hand, denying the independence of its assurance bodies – making them dependent on the very governments they are supposed to supervise – undermines the foundations of the system. The Superior’s ruling is a warning that should not be necessary for any ruler.
