Álvaro García Ortiz will continue to be attorney general of the State. This was confirmed this afternoon by government sources, who report that the appointment will be approved in the Council of Ministers next Tuesday, November 28. These sources highlight that García Ortiz is a career prosecutor of “recognized prestige” and has been holding the position of state attorney general since last year.
The attorney general is currently in office because his mandate declines with the change of Government. The decision of the Supreme Court to annul the promotion granted by García Ortiz to his predecessor, Dolores Delgado, so that she could obtain the highest category of the prosecutor’s career, has put the focus in recent hours on her figure and on the possibility that she was not renewed, but the Government has chosen for him to continue in his position. The appointment will not be approved for another week, but the confirmation of the decision by the Executive resolves the pressure that was being exerted by some sectors of the Prosecutor’s Office to have him relieved. The PP had also requested his resignation this Tuesday after the Supreme Court ruling that found a “diversion of power” in Delgado’s promotion to courtroom prosecutor.
The mandate of the attorney general has a duration of four years and ends when the Government does so, so the renewal announced now is, in theory, until 2027, but in reality García Ortiz’s mandate is linked to that of the Executive and will cease when it does. do this one. The Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor’s Office establishes that the attorney general cannot be renewed from one Government to another, but there is an exception: when the holder has held the position for a period of less than two years. As García Ortiz has been in office for less than a year and a half, the Government can now renew him for another full term.
García Ortiz – who until being appointed head of the Prosecutor’s Office belonged to the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) – was appointed attorney general in July 2022, after Delgado resigned for health reasons. Until then, he had been his right-hand man, as head of the Technical Secretariat, a stage during which he served as one of the main defenders and mediators of the then attorney general inside and outside the race. By succeeding him, García Ortiz not only inherited the position, but also the very strong internal opposition that Delgado received from the most conservative sectors of the Prosecutor’s Office and from the opposition of the PP and Vox, which never considered her suitable to be attorney general due to her position as Minister of Justice during the first Government of Pedro Sánchez. This internal tension has grown more and the renewal announced this afternoon comes at a time of maximum confrontation between the Attorney General’s Office and the most critical wing of the race, due, above all, to the amnesty law proposal and the sentence of the Supreme Court that annuls Delgado’s promotion.
Part of this sector reproaches García Ortiz for not having defended them for the attacks on the tax career which, in his opinion, include the agreement signed between PSOE and Junts for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. This Tuesday, 19 prosecutors from the criminal section of the Supreme Court sent him a letter in which they accuse him of “deliberately ignoring” the request for protection made by the prosecutors of the Supreme Court. processes in the face of the “injurious insinuations” of lawfare contained in the pact signed by the two parties. A few hours before that writing was disseminated, the Contentious Chamber of the Supreme Court had overturned Delgado’s promotion to the highest category of the career decided by García Ortiz in September 2022. The sentence, handed down unanimously by five judges from different sensitivities, is very critical of the actions of the attorney general, who, according to the judges, assigned that position to his predecessor to guarantee her promotion without taking into account the merit criteria that govern these calls. “Whatever the opinion that each one may have, the truth is that this automatic promotion has not been wanted by the legislator, nor is it provided for in the law. And, of course, the power of the Attorney General of the State consisting of making the proposed resolution of calls for positions in the first category is not intended to rewrite the rules of promotion in the fiscal career, adjusting them to his personal preferences,” maintains the Supreme.
When the renewal becomes effective, García Ortiz will have to decide how to execute that sentence. Fiscal sources are inclined to think that the Supreme Court’s decision does not affect Delgado’s current position as head of the Democratic Memory Prosecutor’s Office, but legal sources indicate that it does. It is the third time that the high court annuls an appointment during the García Ortiz era, although in the previous case, that of the Juvenile Court prosecutor, Eduardo Esteban, whose appointment the court has overturned on two occasions, the appointment had been made still under Delgado’s mandate. The Supreme Court is also pending to resolve the appeals presented against the appointment of Delgado to the position she now occupies, an appointment that caused a strong confrontation between García Ortiz and the Association of Prosecutors, the majority in the race and with a conservative tendency.
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Born in Lumbrales (Salamanca) in 1967, García Ortiz’s life has always been closely linked to Galicia, where he worked until Delgado called him to take charge of the Technical Secretariat of the Attorney General’s Office. His name jumped to the national front line when he assumed the Prestige case, about the oil tanker that sank off the coast of Galicia in 2002 and caused one of the biggest ecological disasters in the history of Spain. “It is a miracle that the trial of the Prestige“, he stated in an interview in EL PAÍS, when the final stretch of this oral hearing was approaching in 2013.
In March 2018, he received the most votes in the elections to the Fiscal Council – the main advisory body of the State Attorney General – which was considered a milestone due to the lower weight that progressive prosecutors have in the race. He obtained almost 900 supports after touring the Spanish prosecutor’s offices in an electoral campaign in which Delgado herself and her predecessor in the Attorney General’s Office, María José Segarra, also participated as candidates. Both were elected to occupy a place on the Fiscal Council, although with fewer votes than the current head of the Public Ministry.
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