The judge of Vitoria Blanca Ester Díaz Pulido has issued, six and a half years later, an order that definitively closes the investigation into the allegations of leaks in the 2018 Osakidetza medical examinations. There will be no trial. The resolution, which had been taking more than two years, is not final and can be appealed, but many parties agree that the absence of an exhaustive investigation and the delays that the process has accumulated would make a conviction very difficult. What’s more, many of those involved – complainants and defendants – no longer even work in the Basque Health Service because they have retired or gone to other autonomous communities. According to judicial sources, all the accused have been exonerated. However, there are two in which the closure of the case is “provisional” and not definitive. If new evidence appears, criminal prosecution could be resumed.
Who were the people investigated? They are the opponents Maite Izaguirre, Esther Bravo, Ricardo Asensio, Manuel Hernando Rydings and Claudia Aramendi and the member of the court María Reyes Vega of the OPE of Angiology; the opponents Fe Arcocha, Laura Quintas and Francisco de la Cuesta from Cardiology; the author of the Urology exam, Dr. Javier Extramiana; José Luis Cabriada as author of the Digestive exam; César Augusto Valero, editor of the Anestesia questions; Eduvigis Álvarez from the Neurophysiology tribunal, José Antonio Elexpuru and Covadonga Fernández from the Neurosurgery jury; Iñigo Echevarría, member of Traumatology; and the opponent Thais Salas and her family member Alfredo Martínez Flórez, as well as the members Andrés Beltrán and Javier Meléndez of Plastic Surgery. There has not even been a homogeneous criterion when making appointments for the different exams. An example: the Anesthesia candidates are not on the list unlike those in Angiology, although it is precisely their exams and grades that have been reviewed more closely in the investigation. They appeared as witnesses. It is Salas and Martínez Flórez who see the accusation provisionally closed, always according to judicial sources.
And there are four specialties without any investigation even though the same alerts from the Prosecutor’s Office weighed on them: Intensive Care Medicine, Hospital Emergencies, Microbiology and Cardiovascular Surgery. In general, the common pattern of the thirteen is that there was a great difference in grades between those who passed and those who failed, and it was the case that the best candidates presented almost perfect results in highly difficult tests. Furthermore, it was later found that in many cases these candidates were hospital colleagues of the authors of the questionnaires. “I am the bad guy in the movie, but I have a clear conscience. I haven’t leaked anything […]. If there had been an agreement, [los míos] They would have gotten 100. But I’m sitting here with a clear conscience. “I have not leaked,” explained the member of a court who said he had not committed any irregularity and who has testified in the case as a witness.
This case broke out on June 1, 2018, the same day that, in Madrid, in the Congress of Deputies, Pedro Sánchez became President of the Government after winning the first motion of censure in the democratic history of Spain. First there were two complaints in the specialties of Anesthesia and Angiology, but then the ball grew and grew until thirteen tests were put under the magnifying glass and the Minister of Health, Jon Darpón, and the general director of Osakidetza, María Jesús Múgica, were taken down. and the head of Human Resources, Juan Carlos Soto, among other positions.
The judicial process began with the Prosecutor’s Office, which shortly after becoming aware of this first information opened a pre-investigation. Although Osakidetza did not provide prosecutor Carmen Adán with all the documentation that he had compiled internally (dozens of hours of recordings of opponents, members of courts and others familiar with the process in which references to a “tongo” were heard, were omitted) , the public ministry formalized a complaint and referred the case to a court in Vitoria. The file fell to Instruction 2. In recent years, up to four magistrates have had responsibility for the investigation. The summary was initiated by Yolanda Varona, who was a substitute for Ana Jesús Zulueta, the head of the courtroom. Then Zulueta went to the Provincial Court and gave his place to Cristina Rodríguez Ruiz. Finally, the last owner of the case was Blanca Ester Díaz Pulido.
Aside from the changes, the research process has been very unique. It was stated in a judicial resolution that reviewing the exams in a case that precisely deals with irregularities in competitive examinations did not contribute “anything.” “In relation to the contribution of the originals of the examinations, it is neither necessary nor useful to bring to this procedure a volume of documentation that will not be examined by the court due to the limited interest it has for the case, as well as the unnecessary need to read “an endless succession of medical questions whose content and answer is totally unrelated to the jurisdictional function and which is not the subject of this procedure, since it is not an incorrect evaluation of the exams that is being prosecuted, but rather a possible leak,” the third wrote in writing. of the four judges, Rodríguez Ruiz. And when a few of them were analyzed there were clear signs of anomalies. An example: in the Anesthesia category, the candidates with the best grades repeated the order of resolution of the questionnaire, the content of the answers – word for word – and even the same errors. The member of one exam even said that, when he was correcting, he had the feeling that the best candidates – the alleged beneficiaries of the leaks – had submitted “photocopies”, answer sheets identical to each other and in relation to the correction template.
In addition to the Prosecutor’s Office, two unions have brought the accusation. The most active has been LAB. ESK, for its part, was the center of three opponents of Anestesia who were the first to raise their voices in their category, Manoel Martínez, Marta Macho and Roberto Sánchez. LAB has tried without success on several occasions to investigate not only the irregularity in the exam itself but also the political leadership of the Basque Health Service. The same times he has claimed it, it has been denied. The PNV, in fact, has celebrated Darpón’s exoneration and has used it to denounce a political hunt against his figure.
The initial investigation period ended in the summer of 2021, three years after the events, but a six-month extension was agreed. In January 2022, ‘in extremis’, the accusations achieved six more months so that the matter did not die. But in that period not a single piece of paper was moved and, at the end of that half year, the definitive end of the instruction was agreed. This was endorsed by another instance, the Álava Court, in April 2023. Since then, it was pending that Judge Díaz Pulido would make public this order of conclusions.
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