The Plenary of the General Council of the Judiciary has considered today by 12 votes to 7 that the prosecutor Álvaro García Ortiz meets the legal requirements to be appointed State Attorney General, a position for which he was proposed last Tuesday by the Council of Ministers.
García has been the name proposed by the Government after the resignation of Dolores Delgado was announced on Tuesday for health reasons. García has been Delgado's right hand since she arrived at the Attorney General's Office, having been colleagues in the progressive association of prosecutors. García was a prosecutor in Galicia but was promoted to Chamber prosecutor when he was appointed by his predecessor as chief prosecutor of the Technical Secretariat of the Attorney General's Office.
The same thing has happened with Álvaro García as when the CGPJ had to approve Delgado's suitability report in 2020. In his case, a group of members considered that the independence of the Prosecutor's Office was affected by the fact that the highest representative of the public ministry was the Minister of Justice, as well as a Socialist deputy.
In the case of his successor, some of the members believe that he has ties to the government party for having participated in a pre-campaign event in Galicia. This act refers to a round table organized by a think tank linked to PSdG in which experts spoke about a sustainable Galicia.
The governing body of the judges has thus fulfilled the procedure required by law before approving the appointment. The required requirements are to be a lawyer of recognized prestige with more than fifteen years of effective exercise of his profession. Álvaro García graduated in Law from the University of Valladolid and, according to the certification sent by the State Attorney General's Office, has accredited more than 23 years of services provided in the Tax Career, which he entered in April 1999, the date on which which was assigned to the Prosecutor's Office of Mahón (Menorca).
In 2002 he joined the Santiago de Compostela Area Prosecutor's Office and since 2004 he has worked as a specialist prosecutor in the Environment of the Prosecutor's Office of the Superior Court of Xustiza in Galicia and as a special coordinating prosecutor for fires in that autonomous community. A year later he took over the 'Prestige case' as prosecutor.
Appointed in 2007 Deputy Prosecutor for the Environment of the Prosecutor's Office of A Coruña, he held that same position -specializing in the environment, land use planning, historical heritage and forest fires- for all of Galicia from April 2009 until his appointment in March 2020 as prosecutor Head of the Technical Secretariat of the State Attorney General's Office.
García Ortiz was president-spokesperson of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) from 2013 to 2017 and elected member of the Fiscal Council in the period 2018-2022. “In view of the documentation received, it can be concluded that the aforementioned candidate meets the requirements demanded by the invoked legislation,” states the agreement adopted according to the proposal presented by the president of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary, Carlos Lesmes.
The agreement has been approved with the votes in favor of the president of the governing body of the judges and the members Roser Bach, Mar Cabrejas, Álvaro Cuesta, Vicente Guilarte, Enrique Lucas, Clara Martínez de Careaga, Juan Martínez Moya, Rafael Mozo, Wenceslao Olea, Concepción Sáez and Pilar Sepúlveda. The members José Antonio Ballestero, Ángeles Carmona, Nuria Díaz, Carmen Llombart, José María Macías, Gerardo Martínez Tristán and Juan Manuel Fernández, who have announced the formulation of a particular vote, have voted against.
