Baltar hints at political persecution to request acquittal in his trial for driving at 215 kilometers per hour

PP senator José Manuel Baltar, president of the Provincial Council and the party in Ourense for more than a decade, has requested acquittal in his trial for driving at 215 kilometers per hour, insinuating that the criminal proceedings against him are part of a strategy to get him out of of the institutions. His lawyer, during the trial held this Monday in the Supreme Court, even asked the civil guards involved if they had been promoted at the request of the PSOE. The Prosecutor’s Office has asked that he be fined and that his driving license be revoked for one year.

As elDiario.es revealed last April, a Civil Guard radar detected the car driven by José Manuel Baltar, then president of the Ourense Provincial Council, at 215 kilometers per hour on a section of the A-52, at the height of the Zamorano municipality of Asturianos, in which the speed was limited to 120 kilometers per hour. At first the case was processed before a court in Zamora but was taken over by the Supreme Court when Baltar left the Provincial Council and was appointed regional senator for Galicia.

The speed at which the vehicle was going justified Baltar being charged with a crime against road safety, but he was also fined at that time by the Civil Guard: an administrative fine of 600 euros that he paid and the withdrawal of six points from his driving license. drive. Throughout the process, Baltar’s defense has rejected that the PP senator can be subjected to parallel criminal proceedings and administrative sanctions.

Before the judges and questions from the Prosecutor’s Office, José Manuel Baltar has denied that he was driving at more than 200 kilometers per hour. “Never exceeding 200 kilometers for now, the vehicle’s speedometer would warn me, in no case had the needle exceeded 200 kilometers per hour,” he stated. The politician denied when the prosecutor asked directly if it was possible that, at some point, “his foot went off the accelerator.”

Baltar’s lawyer, through his questions to several witnesses and Baltar himself, has tried to link the case to a possible political intention of civil guards whom he links to the PSOE in Galicia. He has expressly and on several occasions asked a Captain of the Civil Guard if he was promoted in a process in which he was appointed, precisely, by the Government subdelegation, something that he has denied, explaining that he was promoted through a merit-based competition.

The lawyer’s questions have led this police officer to explain that he had to request a transfer due to the illness suffered by one of his relatives: “I didn’t want to bring up the subject,” he lamented.

Baltar’s lawyer has also asked a good part of the civil guards who have testified if they had leaked the information about his case to the media or if they knew, at least, who it had been. Everyone has denied it. “No one under my command has communicated this to anyone,” said one of the commanders called to testify by the defense.

Before the Criminal Court, the prosecutor in the case has asked that he be fined, that his license be withdrawn for one year and that the fine that he already paid at the time of 600 euros be deducted from that money. “The civil guards have clarified all the questioned points,” said the representative of the Public Ministry shortly before acknowledging “the numerous errors contained in the attack, we are surprised that a report for such a simple fact contains so many errors.” Errors that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, do not prevent Baltar from being convicted. “It is proven with objective evidence that he was driving the vehicle with a criminally relevant excess of speed,” he concluded.