Judge Ángela Murillo, the first woman to enter the Criminal Chamber of the National Court in 1993, died this Friday at the age of 74, sources from that court have confirmed to EFE.
Ángela Murillo, retired since September 2024, dedicated 31 years to the Court and more than 40 to the judiciary, during which she starred in some of the most high-profile trials in the history of Spain. From the Nécora case against drug trafficking, shortly after reaching the Court, or the IPO of Bankia (formerly Caja Madrid), through those held against the Al Qaeda cell in Spain, or the .
Trials that gave great visibility to his work, but also many headaches, sometimes the result of his spontaneity. A trait of her personality that Murillo herself, born in Almendralejo (Badajoz) on September 13, 1952, recognized, and to which she attributed, in a farewell talk with regular journalists from the National Court, her famous phrase: . A blasé comment with which he responded to Otegi’s lawyer, Ione Goirizelaia, when she asked him if his client could drink water during the trial of the caso Bateragunefor the attempt to rebuild the outlawed Batasuna. That response cost Spain a condemnation from the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for not having guaranteed him a fair trial.
As a result of these scuffles with Otegi, detractors arose for not having known how to contain himself, but also many followers, and they even dedicated a fan club to him. However, he boasted of having maintained a good relationship with the leader patriot. In fact, he kept British journalist John Carlin’s book about Nelson Mandela on his office table, The human factorwhich Otegi gave him with a beautiful dedication and which he kept fondly because, as he commented, “courteousness does not take away from bravery.” With his Extremaduran grace and his folksy character he created a relaxed atmosphere in the room, even when it was time to scold an accused or a lawyer, for which he usually used fine irony.
When he retired, he assured that he was not ashamed to leave and that he felt the satisfaction of having fulfilled his duty, of having always done what he “felt like,” and he boasted of never having received pressure of any kind: “And that it had occurred to them…” he joked.
Her long career in the judiciary – which began in 1980 in a court in Lora del Río (Seville), when she was 25 years old – mostly coincided with the bloodiest moments of the terrorist group ETA, of which she was also a target in 1997 and which she helped put an end to with the EKIN trial against its political, financial, media and international apparatus.
The process, known as “18/98”, began on November 21, 2005 and ended on December 19, 2007 with the conviction of 47 of the 56 prosecuted for integration or collaboration in a terrorist group. It was a major drain on her, especially on a personal level. His partner underwent a serious surgical operation and, after several months, died. Murillo did not want to interrupt the trial. He presided over the hearing and then went to the hospital at night.
Once ETA disappeared, the National Court focused more on the causes of corruption. A pioneer in the judicial career, she was the first to preside, in 2008, a Criminal section of the National Court, the fourth, which she left in September 2024 when she retired after issuing her last resolutions. One of them aimed at amending the first sentence of the Tandem casereferring to Villarejo’s espionage businesses.
