The judge of the Audiencia Nacional Santiago Pedraz has given a new fifteen-day period to the PSOE so that, “without further delay”, it delivers the information about the lawyers contracted by the party between 2021 and 2025 within the framework of the Leire case.
In a ruling issued within the instruction, the magistrate also demands that, if any data could affect professional secrecy, the party identifies “precisely and individually” the compromised documents and the legal reasons that would justify their exclusion.
Pedraz thus rejects the PSOE's request, which had requested an additional period while waiting for the General Council of Spanish Lawyers to rule on the scope of professional secrecy. The judge maintains that this consultation “lacks any suspensive effect” and that no rule attributes to him the capacity to paralyze an investigation proceeding.
The PSOE alleged in its brief that the electoral campaign and the territorial dispersion of the documentation made it difficult to collect the requested data. The instructor responds that these circumstances are internal and “exclusively attributable” to the requested party itself, so they cannot prevail over the constitutional duty to collaborate with the Administration of Justice.
The court asks for specific objections, not a global refusal
The judge also rules out, for now, the generic invocation of professional secrecy. In his opinion, the PSOE's approach is incompatible with constitutional and ordinary jurisprudence, which requires a specific, individualized and verifiable justification of the possible injury that the delivery of certain information could cause.
Pedraz also underlines that it is up to the Audiencia Nacional to direct the investigation and set the scope of the agreed proceedings, so that the recipient of the request cannot condition its fulfillment on the prior conformity of a professional corporation or on its own assessment of the relevance or proportionality of the measure.
With the new deadline already set, the court's position is now awaiting the PSOE to deliver the requested documentation or specify, in detail, which pieces it considers protected by professional secrecy and for what reason.