Retired judge Manuel García Castellón has sued Ione Belarra before the Supreme Court. The former magistrate is asking that the secretary general of Podemos be ordered to pay him 120,000 euros in compensation for stating that he was part of a group of “corrupt judges” who “prevaricated” against his political party. The request for honor and rectification, as ABC has advanced and as elDiario.es has been able to confirm, was presented before the Civil Chamber for Belarra’s status as a deputy in Congress.
The judge retired in early September, at the age of 72 and after spending the last seven years of his career at the head of the Sixth Court of the National Court. Instructor of corruption cases such as Tándem, Púnica or Lezo, Manuel García Castellón has also played a leading role in several attempts to bring Podemos and some of its leaders and founders to the judiciary, such as the failed investigation into the financing of the party.
The same day that the Official State Gazette published his forced retirement, the secretary general of Podemos and former minister Ione Belarra published a message on her X profile, referring to the magistrate as part of a group of “corrupt judges” who committed crimes to harm, he said, those of us who “defend another idea of Spain.”
As ABC had predicted, once retired and out of the judiciary, the magistrate went on the attack and decided to file a civil action for the right to honor against Belarra before the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court, demanding compensation of 120,000 euros from the secretary general of Podemos.
This is a financial request much higher than the penalties that this department of the Supreme Court usually establishes in cases where it understands that a crime has been illegally attributed to a person in public statements. Two years ago, he signed a compensation of 10,000 euros for a man accused of a rape for which he had not been convicted, while former minister Irene Montero was ordered to pay 18,000 euros in civil damages to a man she accused of being an aggressor, a crime for which he had also not been convicted.
In recent years, through criminal proceedings, the Supreme Court has also dismissed several complaints and complaints filed against political leaders for accusing judges such as García Castellón of prevarication or for denouncing the “war of the law.” It also dismissed, in a decision pending appeal before the Constitutional Court, the complaint filed by Podemos against the judge for prevarication.
