The TSJC orders the arrest of former judge Salvador Alba to enter prison

The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has issued this Tuesday a search and capture order for the former magistrate Salvador Alba to be taken "immediately" to prison, after the last term granted to him had expired and dismissing the allegations of his defense.

The former magistrate of the Las Palmas Court has pending to serve a sentence of six and a half years in prison for crimes of bribery, prevarication and documentary falsification confirmed by the Supreme Court in November 2021, in a ruling that declared proven that he manipulated a criminal investigation to harm Judge Victoria Rosell when she was a deputy of Podemos in Congress.

Last Thursday, October 13, at 5:35 p.m., a police patrol personally notified Salvador Alba at his home in the municipality of Telde (Gran Canaria) that the TSJC had dismissed his request for suspension of sentence for health reasons and that he had 24 hours to voluntarily appear in prison.

As a former magistrate -he was expelled from the judicial career for these same facts- Alba must serve his sentence in one of the prisons equipped with security zones for inmates of his professional profile (Estremera, in Madrid; Seville I; Castellón II, Monterroso, in Lugo; and Logroño, in La Rioja), but in reality he could voluntarily appear in the prison of his choice.

His wife, Teresa Lorenzo, lawyer of the Administration of Justice, had stated that Alba planned to go to a prison this Tuesday from 3:00 p.m. if his situation did not change previously, because the couple maintained that the voluntary term given to him last Thursday at 5:35 p.m. had not yet expired, if it was computed as they believed it should be done.

In these days, Alba's defense has filed a battery of allegations and a new challenge to try to stop his entry into prison: on Friday he alleged defects in the processing of a challenge against another magistrate (challenge that, in reality, was not even admitted for processing because it was filed out of time) and issues such as his request for pardon and his request to obtain at least a postponement for health reasons; and on Sunday he tried to remove the president of the TSJC, José Luis Lorenzo Bragado, from the execution of his sentence for alleged contacts with Victoria Rosell.

In three orders dated this Monday, the 17th, but which have been notified to the parties this Tuesday, the Criminal Chamber of the TSJC flatly rejects all those last-minute attempts by the lawyer Nicolás González-Cuellar to abort the possibility of a search and capture order being issued against his client.

Of the new challenge to the president of the TSJC, the Chamber says that it is "extemporaneous" (filed out of time), "clearly reckless" and that it incurs in a "manifest abuse of right".

In that challenge, Alba's defense accused Lorenzo Bragado of having shown "an unusual haste" to execute the sentence that weighs on the former magistrate (and that is final for almost a year, since November 2021), but in reality his argument was based on some tweets published this summer by Victoria Rosell.

The TSJC stresses that Rosell "does not even mention" Lorenzo Bragado in those messages, which alluded, in addition, to issues in which the president of the court was not going to be able to intervene. Nor does it accept the hours that Alba took from the computer system of the courts to try to show that the TSJC had decided to reactivate his entry into prison when Lorenzo Bragado was still challenged by his first attempt to remove him from the case.

Regarding the allegations of Friday, the Chamber recalls that they were formulated in a request for clarification, where only obvious material errors can be corrected, not introduce new arguments in the matter in dispute. And for the Chamber, "none" of Alba's latest allegations "has anything to do, in the slightest, with the order whose clarification is requested".

"It cannot be pretended that an order is clarified by issues totally alien to those that have been the claims at the time deduced and that give rise to it. Whether another appeal filed in this case has been resolved or not, which it has been, whether it has been notified in a procedurally correct manner or whether an incident of nullity is going to be promoted before another court, are issues that, because they are alien to the case, are not worthy of clarification", the Chamber resolves.