To begin, apologies for the headline of the article with the vulgar expression used when someone knowingly disregards something that must be complied with, but that's how it is
This is undoubtedly what three of the five magistrates have done in issuing a guilty verdict against the Attorney General of the State, the proven facts and their reasoning for which are unknown to us as of the date of this article.
None of the three, neither President Mr. Martínez Arrieta, nor Mr. Antonio del Moral, nor Mr. Berdugo have respected one of the basic tenets of Article 24 of the Spanish Constitution, which is the right to an impartial and therefore objective judge. Objectivity and impartiality are basic requirements of any process derived from acting solely under the rule of law, and it is in this area of impartiality and its objective appearance that the actions of these three aforementioned magistrates fully enter.
I explain myself, it is undisputed and indisputable, as Professor Jorge Cañadas says, that the relevance of the appearance of impartiality is justified because what is at stake is the trust that in a democratic society the courts must inspire in citizens, so that the doctrine of the Constitutional Court and international texts such as the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Rome, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, demand guaranteeing citizens' trust in their justice system, through the principle of objective and apparent impartiality, with the European Court of Human Rights ruling in that regard, in relation to the existence of indications of an appearance of "partiality", when it says that the theory of appearances comes into play "justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done".
Well, applying this doctrine to the case being analyzed or intended for analysis in this article, the following questions/reflections could be posed: Does it align with what is peacefully proclaimed nationally and internationally regarding the requirement to uphold the principle of objective appearance of impartiality that three of the judges who tried the Attorney General had a remunerated legal relationship, agreed upon before or during the trial, with one of the accusers, the first complainant, namely the Madrid Bar Association? Is it compatible with the aforementioned principle that, furthermore, one of those three judges was a co-director of the thesis of Mr. González Amador's lawyer, who acted in the oral hearing as a prosecutor representing the publicly known boyfriend of the President of the Community of Madrid, declared an notorious enemy of the now convicted individual and who, along with his colleagues, could therefore be seen as third parties detached from the interests of the conflicting parties, with sufficient, necessary, objective, and subjective distance to generate trust in litigants and society? Or, on the contrary, under these circumstances, could their resolution be interpreted or be interpretable as motivated by reasons unrelated to the law? The answer can be none other, analyzing and interpreting what we could qualify as indications, that leads us to the rational evidentiary conclusion with adequate structural support of an argumentative nature that the aforementioned magistrates disregarded a principle of objective appearance of impartiality that they should have observed by abstaining from forming part of the trial panel.And let's not be mistaken, as some try to do, because what happened and was duly proven is not only a matter of aesthetics or the usual consent of these types of practices, but it grossly and clearly annihilates any hint of respecting the much-mentioned principle of objectivity, given that it is a matter of ethics, morals, and legality, although it is true that each person has an individual perception of these concepts
