The attorney general challenges the Fiscal Council to shield the appointment of Dolores Delgado
The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, is keeping up with the prosecutors despite the internal criticism received in recent hours due to the haste in making the latest appointments to the prosecutor's leadership before being removed from office. García Ortiz has chosen not to call off the meeting of the Fiscal Council scheduled for next day 8 – where he plans to appoint his predecessor Dolores Delgado, prosecutor of the Democratic Memory Room – contrary to what was requested by the majority of members of this body.
Said Fiscal Council was convened unexpectedly last Monday, two hours after the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced the advancement of the general elections to July 23. Both the Association of Prosecutors (AF) and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF) asked Álvaro García Ortiz to suspend the Council.
Yesterday, the AF described his performance as “surprising” and highlighted that “none” of the previous attorneys general, “once Parliament was dissolved, has made appointments to discretionary positions”, but those that were pending were “deferred”. “Reasons of ethics, transparency, responsibility and institutional respect have led previous Attorneys General to act in this way,” add the six members of the AF in the Fiscal Council, who stress that “the haste” in the call leads one to think that the appointments have already been decided, whatever is said in the Council.
For their part, from the APIF they stressed that “it is not remembered that this has happened on another occasion, a Council with important appointments, convened with the utmost urgency, just when the Parliament is dissolved and a new electoral process is announced”. From both associations they do not question that the body can meet but the reasons of opportunity and urgency to carry out important appointments before the 23-J elections.
The attorney general tried to rely yesterday on two precedents of appointments carried out by his predecessors, the former attorneys general Consuelo Madrigal and María José Segarra, when there was already an electoral appointment on the horizon. García Ortiz appealed to the “historical criteria of the institution” in this regard. However, neither Madrigal nor Segarra appointed Chamber prosecutors, that is, prosecutors from the highest category of the prosecutor's career, in the same situation.. Madrigal limited himself to extending the Supreme Court prosecutor Olayo Eduardo González to the age of 72 while Segarra renewed the mandate of Pilar Fernández Valcárcel, refusing instead to fill the vacant position left by the prosecutor of Sala Antolín Herrero with his retirement..
In addition, neither Madrigal nor Segarra went through a similar institutional situation: with the majority of the Fiscal Council against it, having requested that the meeting be canceled and the appointments be postponed as there were no objective reasons of “urgency” to carry them out.