Ángel Hurtado became the new proper name of the Supreme Court after four years of going unnoticed within the Criminal Chamber. The magistrate, one of the last to join Manuel Marchena’s department, sent the elite unit of the Civil Guard to the attorney general’s office on Wednesday to take all his communications: emails, telephone messages and even notebooks and notebooks. The first major case to fall into the hands of this judge, who arrived in 2020 from the National Court after having distinguished himself by his opposition to the Popular Party harmed by the Gürtel affair or to Mariano Rajoy testifying at the trial of this corruption plot.
The investigator of the case entered the judicial career in 1983 and practiced in the Canary Islands, the Basque Country and Madrid before moving to the Madrid Provincial Court – where he accused a thief of committing crimes despite his religion – and from there to the National Court. Tribunal in 2006. Hurtado, conservative in leaning but not affiliated with any association, arrived at the central tribunal at a time when ETA terrorism monopolized the courtrooms.
As a speaker, he signed dozens of sentences before the National Court which condemned the perpetrators of the Santa Pola attack, the assassins of councilor José Ignacio Iruretagoyena or the managers of the herrikotaverns accused of collaboration with terrorists. Many of his convictions, as speaker or signatory, survived the cassation process, but others did not pass the filter of the Supreme Court: those which condemned the members of Segi or some for jihadist terrorism like the sentence five years in prison for Wissam Lofti. , the Burgos butcher convicted of financing terrorism and ultimately acquitted. He also questioned how his colleagues applied the European decision on the “Parot doctrine” to free ETA prisoners.
Almost a decade ago, his name became the protagonist of one of the cases destined to change the political scenario in Spain: the Gürtel plot. Magistrate Enrique López, later advisor to Isabel Díaz Ayuso, was removed from the court due to his proximity to the PP and the presentation of the sentence in the main branch of the case fell into the hands of Hurtado. And it was then that he found himself alone defending that the party should never have been condemned for having benefited financially from the plot and that Mariano Rajoy should not even appear as a witness.
The image was recorded in the summer of 2017. Ángel Hurtado presided over the court in the case and was responsible for cutting short all the questions that, in his opinion, went beyond the possibilities offered by the visit of the President of the Government . as a witness. A few days earlier, he had objected in writing to being forced to testify. Because he understood that he had not contributed anything, that he could unexpectedly harm several accused or that, due to his position in the leadership of the PP, he did not need to know what took place in Pozuelo or Majadahonda. He also claimed that he did so so as not to harm his work as chief executive.
Hurtado found himself alone in arguing, for example, that Rajoy could appear electronically before the National Court, which would be “less disruptive to the exercise of the functions of his office” and would avoid the “public exposure” of attendance at the trial in person. He also warned of how the PP leader’s statement could be used for political purposes “in areas other than the judicial system.” Rajoy said and his government did not fall because of his testimony. He did so a year later, when the Court ruled that the PP had to return more than 240,000 euros as a lucrative participant.
A sentence that Hurtado did not want to sign. The magistrate left the presentation in the hands of his colleagues because, according to him, there were too many allusions to the symbiotic relationship between Gürtel and a PP who was not part of the dock but rather economic beneficiaries. He also explained in legal terms an argument the party has been making to the public for years: that corrupt politicians and businessmen acted behind the party’s back, and not with its knowledge.
Hurtado’s criteria in the Gürtel case did not convince his colleagues nor the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which two years later confirmed almost the entire sentence and, with it, the financial penalty imposed to the PP for having financed itself through conspiracy activity. in some of its strongholds in the Community of Madrid. The Superior Court ratified this sentence in October 2020. At that time, Ángel Hurtado had left his position at the National Court and was already one more at the Supreme Court who had just radically contradicted his opinion in the most serious corruption case. relevant to the last two. decades.
A secret case against the attorney general
Ángel Hurtado arrived at the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court in added timeappointed by an expired Council of Justice and which still functioned with the majority of the first government of Mariano Rajoy and, a few months later, a legal change blocked the ability of this body to appoint the judicial leadership until its renewal. He entered with Leopoldo Puente and Javier Hernández thanks to an overwhelming majority of 19 votes in favor within the ruling body of judges.
Considered a judge very close to Manuel Marchena, president of the second chamber of the Supreme Court, Hurtado joined the criminal chamber in November 2020. It was a few days after his new colleagues certified the failure of his theory on the PP at the Gürtel. and a few months before the Supreme Court overturned a judgment of his presentation on a suspected jihadist whom he had sentenced to five years in prison when he was a judge in the Appeals Chamber of the National Court. The Supreme Court accused him of “unilaterally” changing the proven facts of the case, among other corrective measures.
During these four years, Hurtado maintained the traditional low profile of newly incorporated judges in the Chamber, although unlike his colleagues in promotion, he was excluded from the courts of relevant cases. One of his first convictions convicted two leaders of Nazi musical groups, an agent for revealing secrets in police databases, several defendants in the “Serrallo case” of corruption in Granada and the mining businessman Victorino Alonso. This is also the sentence revealed by elDiario.es which acquitted two accused of collective abuse of a minor under 13 years old due to her “symmetry of age and maturity” with the victim.
During his first years in the House, he was also responsible for studying complaints and complaints against members of the court, rejecting criminal actions against Pedro Sánchez, Ione Belarra, Irene Montero or Meritxell Batet filed by ultras organizations such whether HazteOir or a group linked to the ultra agitator Cristina, I continued. The criminal investigation against the state attorney general was, thanks to the House dispatch system, the first investigation to fall into his hands and the first case he has led in more than two decades.
Hurtado now finds himself facing the most important cause for public opinion since his abrupt transition into the Gürtel affair which ended up overthrowing the government of Mariano Rajoy. His first measure was to give the person under investigation five days to appoint a lawyer, then send the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard to clone all his electronic devices. A case of alleged revelation of secrets which began with the revelation of a file and a court order which, in theory, were also subject to the summary secrecy of the criminal court.
