Álvaro García Ortiz is under scrutiny by Congress this Thursday, the final step in being confirmed as Attorney General to replace Dolores Delgado, who resigned last week due to ill health. The government-appointed candidate appears before the Congressional Judiciary Commission, whose opinion is compulsory but not binding, after dispensing the drink the General Council of Justice upheld his appointment with a division of twelve members in favor and seven all Conservatives, against. Given the criticism leveled at García, particularly by the PP, which despises him for his “remarkable proximity to the PSOE” and is openly hostile to him, the passage through Congress is unlikely to be peaceful.
The candidate has been former Minister Delgado’s right-hand man in the Attorney General’s Office for the past few years, where García Ortiz previously headed the Technical Secretariat. From 11.30 a.m. he will appear before MEPs at an extraordinary meeting of the Commission so that he can be questioned about his career and his merits. After the examination, the parties give their non-binding opinion on the suitability of the candidate for the post and the way is opened for the Council of Ministers to sign the appointment.
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The government defended García Ortiz’s candidacy because of his long career and because he was “a perfect connoisseur” of the institution, but he was not well received by the opposition, mainly the PP. The formation of Alberto Núñez Feijóo considered that the executive had once again “stumbled over the same stone” as in the appointment of Delgado (who was a PSOE MP and minister) and criticized the candidate’s “remarkable closeness to the PSOE”. It wasn’t long before a photo was circulating on social media showing the future Attorney General at a founding act of the Galician PSOE.
MEPs will not vote on his suitability, but will simply listen to the next Attorney General’s project and possibly raise whatever objections they deem appropriate, which are expected to reflect García Ortiz’s proximity to Delgado. Born in Salamanca, the environmental specialist – he was a Prestige prosecutor – has developed most of his 18-year professional career in Galicia, where he served as delegated prosecutor on the matter.
Chamber Prosecutor García Ortiz entered the public prosecutor’s career in 1998. From 2000 to 2002, he was the coordinator of that operation in Menorca, when he was assigned to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Santiago de Compostela area. There he was appointed Special Fire Coordinator of the Autonomous Community.
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She was also for several years a member of the Fiscal Council, an advisory body to the prosecutor’s office, for the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF), an association of which she was chairman and of which Dolores Delgado was also a member, until she held the portfolio of Minister of Justice, before the Attorney General.