Over the weekend, hundreds of people demonstrated in Madrid and Santiago de Compostela in support of Prosecutor García Ortiz
The Attorney General of Spain, Álvaro García Ortiz, presented his resignation this Monday in a letter sent to the Minister of Justice, after being sentenced to two years of suspension from his position as prosecutor, sources in the Prosecutor’s Office said.
In an unprecedented case in Spanish democracy, which brought the top head of the Public Ministry to trial for the first time, García Ortiz was sentenced to pay a fine of 7,200 euros and is banned from holding office for two years, according to the sentence released on Thursday by the Supreme Court.
García Ortiz was tried in a case that gained dimension and political controversy because it involved an investigation into tax fraud against the sentimental companion of the president of the regional government of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, from the Popular Party (PP, right), and also affected the national executive, led by the socialist Pedro Sánchez.
García Ortiz, in a letter sent to the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, indicated that he was abandoning his position as Attorney General “out of respect for the judicial decisions” handed down by the Supreme Court and that, therefore, “the time has come to resign”.
During the weekend, hundreds of people demonstrated in Madrid and Santiago de Compostela in support of Prosecutor García Ortiz.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he continued to believe in the Attorney General’s innocence, disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision.
Sánchez publicly addressed, for the first time at a press conference in South Africa, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the Supreme Court’s decision.
