Supreme Court prosecutors Javier Zaragoza and Jaime Moreno did not obtain a single vote in the Fiscal Council – the career representative body – in their bid to be promoted to the position of head of the Criminal Section of the High Court . None of the members representing the tax associations nor the ex officio members of the Council supported their respective candidacy during the vote which took place on September 26.
The Fiscal Council is an advisory body to the State Attorney General who, in matters of appointment, proposes among the candidates, although it is the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office who ultimately decides who is chosen to occupy the position. For the position of Attorney General of the Supreme Court Prosecutor’s Office, the five current members of the Association of Prosecutors, the majority in the race and in the Fiscal Council, supported María Ángeles Garrido Lorenzo. The representative of the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF) abstained. For their part, the two representatives of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors and the three natural members voted for Fernando Prieto, who was ultimately proposed for the position by Álvaro García Ortiz, who belongs to the same association.
The thesis defended by the two candidates for the position Javier Zaragoza and Jaime Moreno during the capital trial of the trial, with their companions Consuelo Madrigal and Fidel Cadena, was rejected in the judgment. The four wanted the leaders of the sovereignty process to be found guilty of the crime of rebellion, after detecting alleged violence in the aforementioned political movement. They came to the trial, in this sense, with the help of the investigating judge, Pablo Llarena, and carried the accusation of “coup d’état” until the last moment.
Ultimately, the court presided over by Manuel Marchena acquitted the accused of the crime of rebellion in a judgment that left in writing that the independence project was “a dream.” The public prosecutor, on the other hand, was accused of sedition and his theory triumphed.
The prosecutors’ harshness during the trial, consistent with Vox’s accusation, earned them a high reputation among conservative sectors of the country, politicians and the media. Last Thursday’s vote, in which none of their colleagues’ representatives supported them, indicates that the flattery of Zaragoza and Moreno lies outside the walls of the fiscal race.
The four prosecutors raised the same volume of applause from certain sectors by refusing last June to implement the instruction of the state attorney general to apply the amnesty law to crimes related to the referendum of the October 1 which concerned them, in particular the embezzlement which affects Carles Puigdemont or Oriol Junqueras, or cancel the arrest warrant against the former president of the Generalitat if he sets foot in Spain. The case ended up before the Public Prosecutor’s Office where the thesis of Zaragoza and his three companions did not find the slightest support.
In the career of the prosecutor, the argument of seniority is sometimes defended as a priority when choosing prosecutors for a position. Javier Zaragoza occupies second place in the ranking, an argument that was not enough for him to obtain a single support in his attempt to become head of the criminal section of the Supreme Court prosecutor’s office.
Among the dozens of prosecutors vying for a position and who obtained no support from their colleagues, there is also the main prosecutor of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, who aspired to join the criminal section of the prosecution of the Court supreme.
