Pardons for corruption convicts reignite controversy in Spain

The official gazette that pardons three corruption convicts

If the courts took years to sentence Laura Borràs, the government needed far less time to pardon her disqualification. The publication in Spain's Official State Gazette (BOE) of the pardons for three people convicted of misconduct in office, embezzlement and document forgery has reignited the controversy over the use of the pardon power. These are no minor cases: we are talking about crimes against the public administration, settled in final judgments.

Who the pardoned are and why they were convicted

The name that has caused the biggest stir is Laura Borràs i Castanyer, sentenced by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia to nine years' disqualification from office for administrative misconduct. According to the prosecution, Borràs awarded 18 contracts to a friend, IT specialist Isaías Herrero, worth a total of 335,700 euros between 2013 and 2017, allegedly split illegally and paid through shell companies. The emails in the case file are damning: the politician herself offered to draw up fake budgets to simulate competition.

Alongside her, the other two pardoned are Juan Fernández Gutiérrez, sentenced to three years in prison for embezzlement of public funds, and Natalio Grueso Rodríguez, sentenced to five years for continued embezzlement in conjunction with document forgery. All of them have had their sentences reduced or annulled by decision of the Council of Ministers.

The PP's endorsement and the political noise

The most striking aspect of the file is not the decision itself, but that one of the pardons was backed by the municipal group of the PP (Spain's main conservative party), as El País reported. That detail unsettles the narrative of "pardons for the party's friends" and opens the door to a more uncomfortable analysis: when justice gets close to politics, it always smells of a deal. Critics of the government argue that these pardons are the price paid for the investiture and for the votes of the pro-independence parties. Others point out that the measure is legal and enshrined in the Constitution, even if its use in corruption cases is, at the very least, questionable.

How far does a pardon go?

It is worth clarifying that the pardon is partial and does not erase incivil records. Nor can it apply to sentences that are not final, which limits the government's room for manoeuvre. Even so, the decision comes at a moment of maximum judicial and political tension, with several government members under investigation and with the shadow of the amnesty already granted to the pro-independence leaders. The sense that those in power can pardon their own is hard to neutralise, especially when the sentences were recent and forceful.

With the background hum of a possible European lawsuit, the only certainty is that these three signatures in the BOE will not be the last. The legislature has plenty of road left, and so does the repertoire of pardons.