The health problems of former magistrate Salvador Alba do not prevent him from starting to serve the six and a half year prison sentence imposed by the Supreme Court for manipulating an investigation to harm the current Government Delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, when she was a deputy.
According to the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), this is the opinion issued by the forensic doctors of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Santa Cruz de Tenerife regarding the health problems that Alba alleges in his latest appeals to request that he not be forced to enter a penitentiary center.
In the opinion of the forensic doctors, Salvador Alba's problems "can be resolved or controlled with the appropriate medical treatment, not posing a vital risk at the present time nor conditioning significant limitations in the personal autonomy of the convicted person".
"No contraindications are observed that prevent the informed party from carrying out their treatment in a penitentiary center, where close control and supervision of said treatment and the clinical condition of the convicted person can also be carried out by the center's own medical and healthcare personnel, without prejudice to the need to transfer the inmate eventually or periodically for assessment by specialists in external health centers," adds the opinion of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Tenerife.
Salvador Alba, who served as a magistrate in the Las Palmas Court, was sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands on September 10, 2019 to six and a half years in prison and 18 years of professional disqualification as the author of crimes of prevarication, bribery and document forgery committed in his performance as a judge.
The sentence considered it proven that, when he replaced Victoria Rosell in the Court of Instruction number 8 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Alba offered a businessman prosecuted for a millionaire fraud against Social Security -the president of UD Las Palmas, Miguel Ángel Ramírez- procedural advantages if he declared a series of issues that would allow accusing the then deputy of Podemos of having delayed a judicial case due to personal interests.
In addition, it established as proven that Alba included false data in the reports on Victoria Rosell that he sent to the Supreme Court and that contributed to its Criminal Chamber opening proceedings against the Podemos deputy for Las Palmas on the eve of the 2016 general elections. Rosell resigned from running for Congress again, although she was later acquitted of all charges.
That sentence was confirmed on November 17, 2021 by the Supreme Court. The General Council of the Judiciary has partially executed it and has withdrawn Salvador Alba's status as a judge, but the now former magistrate has still not entered prison.
In one of his latest appeals, Alba questioned the impartiality of the forensic doctors of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Las Palmas who were going to rule on whether his health problems prevented him from entering prison or not. For this reason, the TSJC had to request that the report be carried out by forensic doctors attached to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The TSJC has already transferred the request to the parties appearing as prosecution in their day in the trial against Salvador Alba -the Prosecutor's Office, Victoria Rosell, her partner, the journalist Carlos Sosa; and Podemos- for them to report within three days on the former judge's request to suspend his prison sentence.
