Luciano Varela Castro is a senior Spanish judge, magistrate of theSpanish Supreme Court from 2007 to 2019. He was born atPontevedra,Galicia, in 1948 and is married with four children.
Luciano Varela Castro was a judge of theAudiencia Provincial ofPontevedra for 23 years, and has been a judgeSpanishjudge of theSupreme Court of Spain since 2007.
Since October 2007 Varela has served on the Criminal Division of theSupreme Court. Among his many actions appears the case of Judge Francisco Javier de Urquia in April 2009 which determined that there was no crime oftrespass butbribery, for which he was sentenced to 21 months of suspension from office and fined €73,800, the minimum provided by law.
In 2009 Varela was appointed instructor in the case of the 'Star' National Court judgeBaltasar Garzón Real. Garzón was charged with an alleged crime oftrespass in the case of theFranco crimes, following a complaint by the labor unionManos Limpias, founded byMiguel Bernard Remón, which accused Garzón of knowingly issuing unlawful orders and or decisions[3]
In the first order dated February 3, 2010[4] Varela believes thatBaltasar Garzón "... acted with the purpose of circumventing the legislature's decision on the rules for locating and exhuming victims of the horrendous crimes of the Franco era, knowing that they had been subject to a law of amnesty democratically enacted by the state of Spain, whose will Garzón deliberately chose to ignore or circumvent," and that this fact may constitute a crime ofperverting the course of justice.
In the same order, Varela, as the instructor, declared his court competent to process the case and ordered Garzón to testify as a defendant in criminal proceedings.
Some commentators allege that Varela is hostile to Garzón, for reasons that go back many years "[5][6] and the spokesman forJudges for Democracy, Victoria Rosell, considered that the action against Garzón Varela was to "criminalize legal debate."[7] By contrast,José Luis Barreiro, columnist and politician of the conservativePeople's Party, from his column in the conservative local newspaperLa Voz de Galicia,[8][9] argued that we are seeing the clash between two visions of the role of judges; Varela's vision, argues Barreiro, is that the judge should apply the law putting aside the problems of humanity; while Garzón's vision, still argues Barreiro, is that justice is a specific way to govern the world.[10]
On April 7, 2010, pursuant toCriminal Procedure Law Spanish, Judge of the Supreme decided to transform action into a simplified 'summary procedure' indicting judge Baltasar Garzon on suspicion of crime oftrespass that he committed his court to engage, without jurisdictional competence, a cause for the disappearances of various persons during the Franco era.[11]
Varela's decision completes the preparation phase of the trial, which means that Garzon will sit on in the dock when the accusers provide evidence against him. The judge considers that the decisions rendered by the court of Garzón during the investigation of disappearances of persons during the Franco era are unlawful and not objective. Newspaperel Mundo, stated in an editorial that "the politics of memory are nasty" and constitute a "bloodless form of vengeance."[12] El Mundo reported that the judge, specifically accuses Garzón, in his capacity as a judge of the National Court, of having willfully initiated and sustained allegations against deceased persons who were anyway granted amnesty by the law of 1978 and moreover, the presiding judge well knew that such investigation was not within his competence[13]
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