30 years ago, like now

About thirty years ago, a judge who at that time was dealing with a committed corruption case that plagued the then Vice President of the Government, received a phone call from an old fellow promotion who, visiting Seville, wanted to take the opportunity to invite you to lunch. At the appointment and surprisingly, a third party appeared, a well-known well-connected lawyer who, when it was time for desserts, raised to the judge the possibility that the PSOE would propose him as a candidate for a position on the General Council of the Judiciary ( CGPJ). Obviously, there was a prior condition that the judge had to fulfill: that he decreed for several months the secrecy of summary on the proceedings he was instructing in order not to cloud “the atmosphere” during the upcoming electoral campaign; said in silver, to prevent the particular accusations that IU and PA were exercising from continuing to filter the day-to-day press of a fairly mature procedure at that point, with multiple ramifications and several dozen defendants.

The after-dinner of that lunch ended abruptly after the judge put an end to it. His name, Ángel Márquez, tenacious instructor in the Guerra case and today president of the Third Section of the Seville Court after a brilliant professional career; that of the lawyer, Horacio Oliva, who years later became a professor of Criminal Law of the Complutense and to act as a defender, among others, of Iñaki Urdangarin or Juan Antonio Roca.

Three journalists were simultaneously notified of that overwhelming offer, by the same news source, although only two of them were able to echo it in their newspapers the following day: The world, through Pedro de Tena, and The Andalusian Post, by whom these lines subscribe. The former achieved a five-column headline in its national edition, while the server sneaked the news -literally- in the middle of a piece of information under an absurd three-column headline, on an even page. One story of so many not to sleep. The refusal of Judge Márquez to deny us freed us both from a criminal complaint by Oliva, who limited himself to requesting the protection of his bar association.

Those of us who are dedicated to this trade are not protagonists of anything and, therefore, we must leave our sorrows in the invisible margins of the chronicles. However, there are some episodes that, from the distance of time, are worth rescuing, as an intra-Amunian history, to complete the map of the terrain we walk on and, incidentally, to record the need for journalism.

We verify these days, with regret and as it did three decades ago, that the formation of the CGPJ is an unpresentable compromise between the parties that should lead anyone who is proposed to form part of that body to withdraw their name as long as they do not change their roots. game rules.

Indeed, we live in an imperfect democracy, but not because of the responsibility of the judges and prosecutors who prosecute crime and apply the laws (as suggested by the leader of Podemos) but because of a political class of blushing mediocrity whose purpose it has been and is to perpetuate itself in power. Happy Andalusia Day.

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