Transition's torrid tribunal

Rafael Mendizábal points to the sofas where he spent more than one night. Back then, this office in the National High Court was his, and the threat of a terrorist attack was imminent. The first chief justice of the court talks about a time without bodyguards, just an official vehicle, whose driver often had to provide improvised protection.

One time, his driver noticed a car parked right outside the court, with a woman in the passenger's seat taking notes. He had a bad feeling about it, beeped his horn and the suspicious vehicle drove off. Days later, they found the bag that belonged to the woman who was watching him. It contained all kinds of notes about his schedules, exit times, and routines. Mendizábal still keeps those notes that could have cost him his life.

It's been nearly 35 years since that first chapter in the High Court's history. Now the office belongs to Ángel Juanes Peces, its current chief justice. It's 10am and white porcelain coffee cups have been laid out on the conference table for a meeting of presiding magistrates. Juanes and Mendizábal have agreed to meet to review, for EL PAÍS, the history of the court that was founded at the advent of democracy.

Juanes cedes the seat at the head of the table to Mendizábal, who takes control of the room and the conversation with natural ease. At over 80 years of age, he has a serious, almost aristocratic, bearing. Impeccably dressed, with cufflinks and a constitutional medal on his lapel, Mendizábal tells us how during the Transition, the idea of "a new law of law" was being cooked at the Justice Ministry.

There, as deputy secretary, he drew up two documents, which the Cabinet passed on December 30, 1977; that same day, the National High Court was created, replacing the Court of Public Order (CPO). For many, suspicion turned into outright criticism of the new court, which some saw as the heir to the Franco regime. "I've come here to talk about the High Court, not the CPO," says Mendizábal in a sharp tone, tired of having to explain the same old story. Always polite, however, he is quick to add, "We magistrates always are a bit authoritarian."

He may be a gentleman, but one with a strong character. Mendizábal insists that he did not inherit the authorities of the CPO. "I never judged ideological crimes. The High Court is designed to fight organized crime." During the dictatorship, he says, crimes of terrorism were under the jurisdiction of the military courts. "Franco didn't even trust his own judges."

"I asked [Transition-era Prime Minister] Adolfo [Suárez] about it and he said that since you created it, you should organize it." This is how the justice minister at the time, Landelino Lavilla, offered Mendizábal the position of chief justice.

The special nature of the court, where high-profile cases are tried, has made the High Court the most famous court in Spain. It's a kind of Cape Canaveral for magistrates. As Mendizábal liked to say, "Everything that passed through here ended up in orbit."

After coffee, they continue their trip down memory lane by visiting other rooms. Four floors below the chief justice's office, one of the preliminary hearings to investigate suspected fraud and embezzlement by the General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE) was held; a few days earlier, the Basque separatist leader Arnaldo Otegi was tried in another courtroom for glorifying terrorism. Thirteen years ago, from his office in the High Court, Judge Baltasar Garzón presented the United Kingdom with an extradition warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a milestone in the history of the court which became a model of international justice.

"Hey, Rafael!" someone shouts to Mendizábal when he sees him pass by in the halls. It's Juan del Olmo, the judge who led the investigation into the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, the deadliest act of terrorism in modern Spanish history. The judge summoned so many witnesses that the trial had to be moved to a refitted building in Madrid's Casa de Campo park, as occurred with the tragic case of the tainted rapeseed oil in 1981, which killed 1,100 people and poisoned another 60,000.

The chief justices take us to the first basement of the High Court, to the courtroom where terrorism suspects are tried. Mendizábal took the idea for it from the Nuremberg trials against the Nazi leaders in 1945. The furniture is wooden, but the space is divided by walls of bulletproof glass.

In the area where the defendants testify, the seats are bolted to the floor to avoid a repeat of what happened in the trial of Valentín Lasarte, a member of the Basque terrorist group ETA; in a fit of rage he charged at the glass, banging his chair against it until it cracked. The room has another special feature: the PA system is controlled by the magistrate who presides the courtroom. One button is pressed, and you can't hear the defendant; another, and the defendant can't hear the public. "If you control the PA system you control the situation," they told him, and he took heed.

During the worst years of terrorism, public prosecutors came in and out of the High Court constantly, looking for a safer location. The 1980s were a scary time; bomb threats had become a matter of course. "Many of them were false alarms from people who didn't want to go to work."

They didn't believe in bomb threats. It's as if terrorist attacks were a matter of faith and not a brutal reality that claimed over 100 lives during the court's first year of activity. The attacks also affected the High Court. National prosecutor Carmen Tagle was assassinated in 1989. ETA gunned her down at the garage door of her home on Julio Palacios street in Madrid. The chief justice at the time, Fernando de Mateo Lage, got a call saying Tagle had been murdered. He left the court to go and see the body, never thinking that two years later, he himself would be the target of another attack.

On February 26, 1990, De Mateo Lage received a package at his home, supposedly from Prison Services. It contained a spy novel by John le Carré. Fernando de Mateo, Jr. remembers that day; after finishing lunch early, his father, always restless, had gone to his study. Then came a loud bang and the smell of explosives. De Mateo Lage emerged from a cloud of smoke and dust, looking like a ghost - without hands. "I put a towel over the stumps. I didn't want him to see that he had lost his hands," says his son.

In 1996, ETA sent another book bomb to one of the court's magistrates. The explosion blew three fingers off the hand of José Antonio Jiménez Alfaro, the presiding judge of the High Court's Criminal Division at the time. With his right hand wrapped in a towel and his face smattered with his own blood, Jiménez Alfaro left the High Court building. The court had made the fight against terrorism its signature cause thanks to cases like ETA's bombing of the Hipercor supermarket in Catalonia and the assassination of Popular Party local politician Miguel Ángel Blanco.

The High Court judges also investigated the dirty war against ETA. They ended up convicting a Civil Guard general, Enrique Rodríguez Galindo, for the abduction and murder of alleged ETA terrorists Jose Antonio Lasa and Jose Antonio Zabala in 1983, and deputy police chief José Amedo for his involvement in several murders carried out by the GAL (or Antiterrorist Liberation Groups, death squads set up by the government to fight ETA).

For both chief justices, the prophecies that foretell that the end of terrorism will mean the end of the court are ridiculous. "What about drug trafficking? And trials against corruption, like the Banesto case?" says Juanes. Without waiting for an answer, he says, "Terrorism is only a part of the High Court's criminal jurisdiction, and criminal sentences are just a small fraction of all the sentences it issues."

As a metaphor for a cycle that is coming to a close, the fishbowl and the rest of the High Court building, near Plaza de Colón in Madrid, won't be around for much longer. The Justice Ministry plans to spend 12 million euros on renovating the inside of the building that Mendizábal snared. It was 1978, and all kinds of new democratic institutions were hunting for the best headquarters in Madrid. Mendizábal went to the little palace under construction just a few meters from the Supreme Court and told the foreman in charge of its renovation. "Get us a floor ready, we're coming here to work," he ordered. All the noise and dust didn't daunt him. "Rafael had a motto: 'Occupation is 90 percent of property.' And he wasn't willing to let anyone steal the building from him," says Paloma, one of the few members of the first group of employees who squatted at the High Court.

Paloma is the court's oldest public servant. Today she's a court secretary, but she has been Ms. Do It All: press officer, back when the department didn't exist yet, the person in charge of remodeling the building and right-hand woman of chief justice Rafael Mendizábal, her husband.

Paloma was a first-hand witness to the first case that was "digitized." The word is excessive: it consisted of a table of contents for the rapeseed oil trial, which allowed interested parties to find their way around the closets where the case files were kept. The rapeseed oil case alone took up an entire room. Putting an end to those labyrinths of shelves stuffed with folders is the High Court's new challenge. The countdown for the goal of zero paper began in 2009. Following a 10-million-euro investment and a marathon of scanning and documentation through morning, afternoon and night shifts, all the court's open cases have now been digitized.

Now it's time to see how it works. The High Court - the only one with three out of four jurisdictions (everything but civil law) - is the testing ground for the digitization of the justice system. "It's a pioneering experience," says Luis Martín Contreras. With a gray moustache and a serious air, the secretary of the ministry that is coordinating the project says that this will speed up proceedings by "20 to 30 percent."

Contreras does not hide his frustration with the lack of impact that the project has had, although he admits that the Justice Ministry itself is partly to blame for its bad reputation. "Until now, the justice system has sold nothing but arrogance and error. Although we're fighting to change that," he says. Out of his wallet he pulls a card, similar to an electronic ID. It's the key for his digital signature. He puts the card in the computer's lector and signs the apostille of a letter. "This is what the future will be like: resolution signed, resolution notified."