Judge José Manuel Clemente Fernández-Prieto is, 70 years old, a long judicial career behind him that, until a few days ago, when he had to take the baton in one of the most media judgments that are remembered at the National Court … it had gone unnoticed by the general public. He entered by opposition in 1984 and premiered in the District Court of Castuera, in Extremadura, from where he jumped to Madrid and after passing through several instruction courts and a criminal court reached the sixth section of the Provincial Court. In 2019, with almost everything done already, he opted for a transfer contest that put him in charge of the Single Criminal Court of the National Court. There is only one of its species because in an organ that is responsible for special severity crimes, such as terrorism, the procedures that carry sentences of less than five years in prison do not abound. Those are the ones he judges.
Maybe he thought it was a quiet, although stimulating destination, for the final stretch of his magistrate career. Maybe he thought about it again when on February 3 there were more than a hundred journalists accredited to hear the former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, for the kiss that gave the player Jennifer Hermoso in the Sidney World Cup end. As it may, he has gained an unusual prominence in a trial that has been broadcast by streaming in sessions that followed dozens of people from different parts of the world and who have seen him take their hands to the forehead, head, interrupt to expedite the stories of some some witnesses or attract attention to the ways of others. That they have seen a magistrate who did not seem to want to be there. “You have exhausted me,” Zanjar came to lift one of the sessions.
For the newspaper library, for example, for example, the way of engaging with the prosecutor is between a joyful film and a comedy, with successive exchanges of “protest”, “then protest” to delimit the facts that could be interrogated. Accurate or not when marking the contours, that the appeal sentences will already say, their appreciations sometimes generated assent in the defenses bench. Others, in the accusation. Some lawyer had to take his hand to his mouth to hide the laugh, as when he asked the Sorda Birth expert, who appeared by videoconference: “Do you listen to us?”
A movie show
More famous were the comments of Abroncar and those who pointed out that the sessions were becoming long. “If you give us a rally we can throw ourselves here until the day of the final judgment,” he told Rubiales. And it was only Tuesday. “The trial is already lasting,” he would state a day later, when he said that the statements of the witnesses were looking for him “quite insulous.” He was already scolding a couple of declarants. To which he was director of Communication of the RFEF, Pablo García Cuervo, he reproached him “La Chulería” (deservedly, as commented in the halls) and the national coach, Luis de la Fuente, who intended to choose to answer, as in a news conference. His would play: «He is a witness who has been saying ten minutes to say nothing and we have determined that he is a liar. And I do not say that it is not, but want him if they consider that he has lied in the trial, ”he settled on the coach. It was not the only case. “Do we stick to the witness to tell us what you want?” He snapped at the accusation that the AFE exerts when he shakes Montse Tomé. “Follow, continue,” he said again and again these days, hurrying.
Now, it is he who plays against the clock because he has to write the sentence. The justice administration reservoir returns several signed by him and indicates that he also likes to go to the point and that he is agile with the deadlines. “With this, although it seems a lie, we have ended,” he said Friday at the last session of the trial, but his resolution will not be firm. For the parties, the end is still far.
His most famous phrases
To Rubén Rivera
«Listen to the questions. Do not bring a prepared roll »
To the prosecutor
«We are not prosecuting whether or not to resign. Let’s go to the facts »
To Rubiales
“If you then give us a rally we can throw ourselves here until the day of the final judgment”
To the prosecutor
“We are not in a debate”
To the room
“The trial is enough”
To a lawyer
“The statements are quite insulous”
About Tomé, AFE
“Do we stick it to say what you want?”
To a lawyer
“I’ve been saying it for three days, witnesses say facts do not make value judgments”
About the source
“It has been saying that he knows nothing and we have determined that he is a liar»
A DE LA FUENTE
“Here one comes to answer what is asked”
To García Cuervo
«Enough of those answers. I want to know things clearly, not with chulería »
To all
“You have exhausted me”
In the end
“With this, even if it seems a lie, we have ended”
#judge
