Former corrupt judge Salvador Alba Mesa is already enjoying freedom one year and ten months after entering the Madrid Estremera prison to serve a six and a half year prison sentence for conspiracy against magistrate Victoria Rosell, former government delegate against gender violence. Since the end of July, he has been seen on the island of Gran Canaria, where he has his family residence, first in the city of Telde, where he has his home, and this same Saturday in the tourist area of Meloneras, in the company of members of his family, according to what the witnesses who saw him told this newspaper.
The General Prison Law provides that persons sentenced to a custodial sentence may benefit from certain prison benefits after serving a quarter of the sentence imposed, provided that they observe good behaviour during their stay in prison and have favourable reports from the detention centre’s evaluation committee. This must be the case of Salvador Alba, who is serving a sentence in Estremera Prison, in Madrid, one of the five existing prisons in Spain reserved for prisoners with special consideration, that is, public agents linked to justice, with the State security forces and bodies or with penitentiary institutions.
Having served a quarter of his sentence, Salvador Alba can now go out on weekends, and even accumulate several to enjoy more consecutive days out of prison and be able to settle in Gran Canaria, where his family lives and where he has been seen several times since last July.
The High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) still has no official knowledge of these permits granted to Salvador Alba. The Civil and Criminal Chamber, which is responsible for the execution of his sentence, sent a judicial letter on 31 July to the Prison Surveillance Court and the Estremera prison to request information on this matter, but has not yet received a response.
The next prison benefits that the prisoner can benefit from should be those related to daily business travel to an approved job. Alba will no longer be able to be a judge, but he will be able to practice the profession of lawyer, a job that he declared he would do before entering prison, when one of the two pardons that the current Spanish government denied him was processed. In order to be able to work in an office in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he would have to be transferred to one of the two existing prisons on the island.
Salvador Alba Mesa was sentenced in September 2019 by the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands to six and a half years in prison and to pay compensation of 60,000 euros to his victim Victoria Rosell. The sentence, for the crimes of falsification of a public document, corruption and judicial error, was ratified by the Supreme Court in November 2021, but it was not until October 2022 that he entered prison thanks to a wide range of tricks with which he tried to avoid serving his sentence.
Among other arguments, Alba wanted to make it clear to the court that an unexpected illness prevented him from traveling by plane, an illness that now seems to have disappeared so that he can travel to Gran Canaria whenever he obtains one of the weekend permits for which he is entitled.
[Una primera versión de esta noticia describía que el mínimo de cumplimiento para permisos penitenciarios era de un tercio de la condena, cuando en realidad es de un cuarto]
