Garzón, Baltasar

b. 1955, Jaén

   Judge

   The judiciary played a prominent role in the fight against corruption in the early 1990s both in terms of investigating and prosecuting cases of political corruption. This central role adopted by the judiciary had the effect of catapulting many judges into high-profile public roles. One judge in particular, Baltazar Garzón, achieved such notoriety that the press dubbed him "Super Garzón".

   Garzón gained a high public profile principally as head of the investigation into the activities of the GAL, an anti-ETA group which engaged in a dirty war campaign against the Basque terrorist organization between 1983 and 1986. The group was allegedly set up by two senior Spanish police officers and was authorized and financed from within the Interior Ministry. Although the case was supposedly solved with the sentencing of the two police suspects, José Amedo and Michel Domínguez, the GAL case was reopened by Garzón following a series of interviews with Amedo and Domínguez, published in the newspaper El Mundo, which implicated senior government officials. Garzón was temporarily suspended from the case in January 1995 owing to allegations from a former member of the Interior Ministry that he was involved in a deliberate campaign to undermine the socialist PSOE administration. The government was considerably embarrassed when these allegations were unfounded and Garzón was subsequently reaffirmed in his position as investigating magistrate for the case.

   Garzón also gained a high political profile by standing as an independent candidate in the 1993 general election. He appeared on the PSOE's list for Madrid as the number two candidate behind Felipe González in what was widely regarded as a deliberate move by the socialists to show that they were taking the fight against corruption seriously. Regarded as a political trump card at the time, Garzón was duly elected, only to resign in May 1994 in protest against what he regarded as the government's reluctance to tackle corruption directly, as well as the government's overt interference in the judiciary. Indeed, the blurring of the boundaries between executive and judiciary in Spain is clearly a problem. All too often the judiciary is viewed as simply another branch of the executive, something which can be seen in the increasing overlap in personnel between the executive and the judiciary of which Garzón is simply the most notorious example.

   See also: corruption; legal system; politics

   GEORGINA BLAKELEY