“The perversion of the popular accusation by ultras and buleros is already a democratic problem. And that the PP goes along with them is regrettable. Of course, it must be frustrating that so much work gives them so little return.” The one who speaks this way is the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, who in the last control session of the Government of this 2024 denounced without ambiguity that the “far-right associations that you (PP and Vox) benefit are perverting the figure of the popular accusation because they are persecuting, not crimes, but people, honest progressive politicians and their families.” And he said more: “I also categorically affirm that ultra organizations do not seek to clarify the facts, but rather to tell lies and for you to benefit from those lies and hoaxes.”
Bolaños was not speaking for the benefit of inventory. The Government has been studying for some time excluding this type of associations from the popular prosecution within the framework of the reform that leaves criminal investigation in the hands of prosecutors. The minister has already asked the Ministry’s technicians for alternatives to put an end to this practice with which a handful of far-right associations have managed to have in the last year investigated in the courts. the wife of the president of the Governmentto the brother and even to the State Attorney General for having sent a statement to the media that denied several hoaxes about the tax crimes confessed by the partner of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, which were spread by her chief of staff.
The popular accusation is included in the Constitution, it is a figure that only exists in Spain and that seeks the participation of citizens in justice. In fact, it has been key in some of the most notorious corruption investigations, such as that of the Gürtel case, which caused the fall of Mariano Rajoy’s government in 2018 after a motion of censure, but also that of the Nóos case, which put him on the bench. to the sister of Felipe VI. So the controversy will be served, despite the fact that today this figure has been instrumentalized by extremist groups in their crusade against Pedro Sánchez and despite the fact that all the governments, of the PP and the PSOE, have tried on several occasions to limit this right with little success.
Now, once the General Council of the Judiciary has unanimously endorsed, although four years late, the draft Criminal Procedure Law (Lecrim), approved by the Government in November 2020, Bolaños has proposed to accelerate the reform to send it to the Congress of Deputies in the first quarter of 2025. Before him there were two other attempts by the PP governments, in 2011 and 2013, to modify a law that dates back to 1882 and has had more than 70 modifications in democracy.
The reform that is now being faced will divide the criminal procedure into the investigation, accusation trial and trial phases. In the first phase, the investigating judge will disappear, since the investigation will be directed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judge will act as a guarantee judge, a new figure who will be the one who ensures fundamental rights. The model is the one that governs almost all of Europe.
Neither parties, nor unions, nor public administrations
Regarding the text that was sent to the Council of the Judiciary, political parties, unions and public administrations were already excluded from popular action. And although the nature of the figure has always been the citizen’s participation in justice and the search for legality, over time it has been used by political organizations to have access to judicial documentation and use it for their own benefit or to generate press headlines against the political adversary.
To achieve this objective, public legal entities, political parties and unions will be excluded for “reasons of minimum institutional coherence.” Regarding the last two, their elimination as popular accusers derives, according to the draft approved in 2020, from their peculiar insertion into the constitutional order as organizations of public relevance and from “the special risk of instrumentalization of the process that arises from their active intervention in the political debate.”
The draft contemplates the possibility of excluding the exercise of civil action in cases of “special complexity” in which the precise determination of its scope can excessively delay and harm the development of the criminal investigation. And it will be the Guarantees Judge who will make the corresponding decision, at the request of the prosecutor responsible for the investigation.
Now what is sought is to extend the limitation to far-right organizations for a matter of “democratic hygiene”, the Government defends, where they do not offer details about what the formula will be with which to exclude the ultras to end the “fraudulent use of popular action” and its pernicious effects such as political or media purposes or pure revenge.
The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortíz, has also warned about this practice on several occasions. The last in a conversation with students and experts at the Dataforum Justice held recently in Granada, in which he said that sometimes popular accusations request to enter into a procedure to “obtain information” or because they are interested in the case acquiring “media impact.” ”.
“The process is to punish the guilty and discover the crime and the purposes of these accusations are different, they are different. We will have to see what interests us as a country,” said García Ortiz, investigated today by the Supreme Court for an alleged revelation of secrets about Alberto González Amador, partner of the Madrid president and accused of tax fraud. In her case, the procedure was opened at the request of the boyfriend of Sol’s tenant, but several popular accusations made by the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF), Fundación Foro Libertad y Alternativa, the self-proclaimed union Manos Cleans and the Illustrious Bar Association of Madrid.
There are many jurists who agree with the government’s analysis of the use of justice for purposes very different from the criminal process and which also increases the risk of prospective investigations or perverts the natural scheme by which only those investigations should reach the courts. in which there are conclusive indications of criminal responsibility.
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