Manuel Baltar was caught driving an official vehicle of the Ourense Provincial Council, of which he was then chairman, at 215 kilometers per hour on April 23. It was Sunday and the Guardia Civil intercepted him on the A-52 near Asturianos (Zamora). He was accused of an alleged crime against road safety, and what would have been resolved in a quick trial for mere mortals ended up in the Supreme Court. Seven months after the incident, the Supreme Court opened a case against him this Tuesday, having assessed, like the ordinary courts that heard the matter, evidence of a crime. The lecturer will be the judge of the Criminal Court Ana María Ferrer.
The scandal occurred on the eve of the March 28 local elections and Baltar decided to postpone his resolution as long as possible to keep it out of the polls. He was defended by the lawyer Juan Ramón Montero, who regularly acts in cases related to the PP, and twice defied the head of the Investigative Court 1 of Puebla de Sanabria. The last sit-in occurred a few days before the vote, but a few hours later he agreed to appear electronically. The politician had another maneuver up his sleeve. He defied the punishment demanded by the public prosecutor’s office of a fine of 1,800 euros and a year without a license, forcing the case to be transferred to the Criminal Court 1 of Zamora. After he finally announced in June that he would not become president of the provincial body again, his party elected him senator in July through autonomous nomination, which forced the transfer of the case to the Supreme Court due to his status as a qualified person.
During this time, Baltar has fallen from grace. The politician, who inherited his offices from his father José Luis and who served for years as the only internal counterweight to Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the Galician PP, has also resigned as provincial leader of the party in Ourense. However, the people’s representatives managed to retain the Ourense Provincial Council, which the Baltar family ruled with an iron fist for 33 years. They achieved this thanks to a pact with Democracia Ourensana, the party of the controversial mayor of the provincial capital Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, whom Feijóo’s party accused of corruption shortly before the election campaign. In order to “facilitate” the agreement, Baltar announced that he would take a step back and give up his candidacy for provincial president again.
On September 27, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court heard the cases from the courts of Puebla de Sanabria and Zamora. After various procedures, including confirmation that the PP politician is now a senator, the judges have decided to initiate proceedings against him.
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