Madrid magistrate Carmen Rodríguez-Medel, the investigating judge who commissioned a controversial Civil Guard report on the Pedro Sánchez government's handling of the coronivirus crisis, has refused to close the case against the government's delegate in Madrid, José Manuel Franco, rejecting the arguments of both the public prosecution service and the state solicitors. Having earlier summonsed Franco to explain his actions at the start of Spain's coronavirus crisis, she is maintaining his hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
In a resolution, which may still be appealed before the Madrid Provincial Court, the judge rejected the requests made to paralyse and annul the proceedings on the grounds that Franco's rights to a defence had been violated. Specifically, she points out that Spain's state of alarm, called due to the coronavirus, has not stopped ordinary court hearings in the case and concludes that "the claim that everything is null and void because the criminal jurisdiction was paralyzed cannot prosper."
The offices of both the public prosecutors and the state solicitors requested on Monday that the case against the Spanish government and against Franco should be thrown out. Judge Rodríguez-Medel rejected the accusation that she had not processed the appeals by prosecutors and solicitors and suggested that the problem had occurred because the parties accepted the possibility of extending the deadlines, which was possible thanks to the state of alarm.
However, the magistrate argued that "it is a well-known fact" that the investigative courts, or at least hers, had continued to hear cases during the state of alarm and, thus, continued to hear experts, witnesses, investigators, either by video conference or in person.
Judge who called for Civil Guard report
It was judge Rodríguez-Medel who commissioned the Civil Guard, in its capacity as judicial police, to investigate and report on the possibility that the Spanish government had committed a criminal offence by allowing the Women's Day rally on March 8th to go ahead, despite the coronavirus crisis which was already arriving in Spain at the time. Madrid command head of the Civil Guard, colonel Diego Pérez de Los Cobos failed to properly inform his political superiors of the report. He was subsequently dismissed from his post by Interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, opening a crisis which has since led two other senior Civil Guard figures to vacate their positions.