The Podemos Bullseye: Judge Yllanes

There are those moments when you see someone and suddenly realise you are looking at Jim Bowen. "Let's have a look at what you could have won." Bully's special prize is ... ? Well it could have been having the opportunity to pack Princess Cristina and others off to choky. He quite liked the idea of presiding over the trial of the Infanta, and he has said as much, just as he has said that "Nóos" (the name of the case that has led to the trial) "was a sweet" after some 26 years in the profession. Instead, there's likely to be another special prize. Becoming a deputy in the national Congress.

The lookalike of the "Bullseye" presenter of long ago is Juan Pedro Yllanes. Early in 2016 he was meant to have been heading the judicial process in which the Princess (unless her lawyers can get her out of it), the Princess's husband, the former president of the Balearics, Jaume Matas, and others all stand accused of less than honest brokering under the catch-all Nóos case title. Yes, it was difficult to give up that sweet, but the now ex-judge Yllanes has been willing to forego this in order to become part of what he believes will be "an exciting legislature": in other words, the next government of Spain.

This unexpected career change has certainly not gone unnoticed. It would have been noticed whichever political party Yllanes had opted for, but it has been especially noticed because there is only one party he would have given Nóos up for. Podemos. And as Podemos looks destined, according to the polls, to secure a couple of seats in Congress, the former judge will be off there in the new year, no doubt keeping up to date with events in the Palma court via a Twitter feed.

Podemos had of course attempted to lure José Castro off the judge's chair and take its Congress shilling, but Castro - the investigating anti-corruption judge who has done the legwork for Nóos - has outstanding business to attend to, and most of it involves Matas. Maybe Yllanes is second choice, but this is not to diminish the scale of the coup that Podemos has pulled off.

With the party having already persuaded the former chief of defence staff, General José Julio Rodríguez, to take up the Podemos Congress cause in Zaragoza, it is marshalling election resources with impressive CVs. If there were a concern that Podemos lacked credibility in terms of individuals associated with it, then it appears determined to remove such a doubt. Moreover, these are not individuals who have grown disenchanted. Yllanes has observed that the judiciary (and the state prosecution) in the Balearics is in the vanguard when it comes to pursuing corruption: he is walking away from a system of which he is an admirer and not a critic. Credibility is thus reinforced.

And this credibility has caught the right, including the right-wing media, on the hop. Mariano Rajoy and the Partido Popular have criticised him - but then you would expect them to - while the impression is that the media don't quite know how to react. The announcement came out of the blue, leaving no time for co-ordinated and aggressive media reaction to be developed. Nevertheless, Yllanes will have to anticipate enduring such a reaction, and it probably won't only come from the PP and the right-wing media. There is the legal institution as well. Its rivalries and jealousies are well known and they were fully exposed when there was the ganging-up against investigating judge Baltastar Garzon, who was to later find himself being disqualified.

There again, Yllanes is part of the Podemos democratic regeneration project, and this includes the judiciary as much as it does political parties. He, in emphasising how well the Balearics have done in pursuing corruption, points a finger elsewhere in Spain, implying that there has been less rigour in going after both the PP and PSOE.

A further potential pitfall for Yllanes is that he will be pigeonholed as a one-issue politician in advancing the Podemos anti-corruption cause. It was no accident that the presentation of him as a candidate for Congress was made in front of Palma Arena, the focus of so much of Judge Castro's attention. But there is the rest of the Podemos programme into which he has to buy. Presumably he has.

That presentation was notable for the fact that it featured a beaming Alberto Jarabo as well. It was Jarabo, we are led to believe, who made the overture to Yllanes and not Podemos national leader, Pablo Iglesias. As such, it represents a triumph for Jarabo. The perception is that it is Laura Camargo who wears the Podemos trousers in the Balearics. The Yllanes coup has weakened this perception and so given Jarabo greater personal credibility. And as for Yllanes himself. Well, he's no Jim Bowen.

The Persecution Of Baltasar Garzón

It takes something for a judge to be the subject of a film or a TV show. Baltasar Garzón is neither an eccentric figure of the Wild West (Judge Roy Bean) nor a fictitious and unrealistic character such as Judge John Deed. He is grounded and real. He is grounded in more than just one sense. Level-headed, he has also been suspended since last May, while awaiting trial on an allegation of "prevaricación", which is a Spanish legal concept which isn't really as it sounds; it can be taken to mean misconduct in office or possibly perverting the course of justice.

The documentary film, "Listening to Judge Garzón", is more than simply a look at his life and times and his fears arising out of his suspension. It is also representative of the support Garzón has from the liberal arts. A week ago, in Madrid, there was a demonstration, one by artists, unionists and politicians, calling for an end to the "persecution" of Garzón. Under the banner "truth, justice and reparation", the demonstration rejected the attempted criminalisation of Garzón and criticised the inaction of the government and tribunals.

Garzón, who, by appearance, has something of a chubby Sven-Goran Eriksson about him but who has not been guilty of Sven's peccadilloes or indeed those of Judge John Deed, is far from uncontroversial. To call him a judge is misleading, in English terms. He is an investigator, more than he is an arbiter. It is through the nature of his investigations that he has aroused controversy and the attentions of opponents as diverse as the Spanish right wing and the US Government.

The Spanish legal system allows for investigations that go beyond national jurisdiction. Consequently, Garzón has brushed up against the American authorities for seeking to pursue torture allegations and Henry Kissinger. But it was one investigation in particular, one in Spain, that brought about his suspension. It was that of calling for exhumation of graves and for charges of crimes against humanity related to incidents during and after the Civil War.

Garzón, so goes the allegation, exceeded his authority in ordering this investigation. It was said to go against the amnesty that was granted after Franco's death, one that, until relatively recently and the introduction of the law of historic memory which was designed to strip Spain of vestiges of the Franco era, had caused a kind of collusive, national amnesia.

The argument that the investigation contravened the amnesty is dubious. Its drafting was intended to clear those who had been imprisoned by the Franco regime; not the Francoists and Francoist judges who had put them into prison. Amnesia and selective memory have surrounded its actual terms ever since. The selectivity has been one of interpreting the amnesty to suit purposes.

The investigation was itself suspended. But this didn't stop Garzón being indicted. And the impulse for his being so has widely and correctly been seen as one that has come from the right. The Partido Popular has been accused of willing his neutering, while the ones to actually file a lawsuit were from a right-wing trade union called Manos Limpias ("clean hands"). Other hands involved with bringing Garzón to trial were those of the Falange.

It is the dark forces of the extreme right that hang over the Garzón affair. Though Garzón could well be accused of courting his own publicity and seeking self-aggrandisement, the case reveals much of what lurks beneath the surface in Spanish society and of the dichotomy between liberalism and the pursuit of justice and a reactionary neo-Francoism.

It also reveals much about the politicisation and partiality of the legal system. Garzón is not completely immune to charges of political bias; he is a member of the PSOE socialist party. But one of the judges selected to investigate the charge against Garzón contributes to a magazine with pro-Franco sympathies. Last year, more than 1500 judges issued a declaration condemning the influence of political parties in the legal process.

It is against this background that you have the current situation in Mallorca in which two parties, the now former Unió Mallorquina and the Partido Popular (neither to the left of the political spectrum), have been levelling allegations of political interference and judge and prosecutor bias in cases of corruption. The PP's Balearics leader, José Bauzá, has come out and said that "cases of supposed corruption" directed at the party have been pursued with the "clear agreement and rigour" of the judiciary.

Whatever the truth or not of bias and interference, from either left or right of the political spectrum, there is undeniably an underlying politicisation, and it is one that threatens an undermining of what should be an independent institution - the judiciary. More than this, however, and as the Garzón affair exposes, influences on the legal system go to the centre of Spain's democratic institutions and to a battle for the country's heart and soul. If Garzón is indeed being persecuted - and he is to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights - then it is worrying. And not just for Garzón.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Here Come The Judge

So, the Spanish justice minister has resigned. The reason? He went on a hunting trip with a prominent judge or, more accurately, he was on the same trip; there is a difference. Sr. Bermejo, the minister, says that it was all a coincidence and that he "barely even greeted the judge", reports the BBC website of the trip. Justice minister, leading judge - would hardly know each other after all. Still, there is no reason to assume that they are best of mates, so could well have just been on nodding terms during this trip.

There is rather more background to this, of course. Judge Garzón, himself taken into hospital last week following an anxiety attack, is one of the country's top investigative judges; he it was who had ordered the exhuming of graves as part of a case to charge Franco and cronies with war crimes. That order was overturned, but he keeps coming into the public eye, as he did when he recently ordered the arrest of members of the opposition Partido Popular - the day before the hunting trip in fact. And it's this that has really stirred the pot. The PP leader Mariano Rajoy reckons that there's something a bit fishy about the whole thing. What is fishy is the fact that many of the current scandals nationally and in Mallorca stem from previous PP administrations. Sr. Rajoy has sought to draw a connection between the hunting trip and the investigation, which he says is for political reasons ahead of forthcoming regional elections. It may be unfortunate that they were both on the same trip, but I daresay that there are other occasions, other than those of formal governmental duty, when their paths might cross and would go unremarked on. Perhaps more important was the fact that the minister didn't have a licence to hunt. That he has chosen to resign might suggest that there is some honour among Spanish politicians, which is more than might be said for British ones, those close to the justice ministry, for example. She may be the minister for the other half of the old combined Home Office, but how Jacqui Smith cannot resign is beyond me. Anyway, that's another matter.

Still on matters political though, my thanks to Anne Marie for finding that the mayors' big away day to Brussels was hilarious and for asking whether there has not been a protest over the fact that so many mayors and other officials can all troop off to Belgium for something that should be the responsibility and duty of just one or two representatives. And the strange thing is that there hasn't been. Barely a murmur in fact. One wonders why the people of Mallorca and the Balearics are, as Anne Marie suggests, so "passive and disinterested".


Right, let me remind you that there is now this twitter malarkey on the blog. I am pretty sceptical about it I must say. I introduced it only because I was hearing that it was a sort of must-do thing. I really shouldn't succumb to this sort of pressure. Whether it serves any purpose where this blog is concerned I'm not really sure; whether it serves any purpose anywhere I'm not really sure. It seems like another way of passing on largely inconsequential bits of nothingness, such as one hears all the time when people are making calls on their mobiles. "I'm just gonna 'ave a dump now, babe, awright." "Yea, me too, babe." "Love yer, babe." That type of thing.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - here's a good version rather than the expressly religious ones: from his "Mack The Knife" phase, Bobby Darin (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M58eoKaI2g0). Today's title - who was this and on which TV show did he appear?

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