People's judge vs. the duke

He has put a former premier of the Balearic Islands on the stand, and now his sights are set on none other than the king's son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin. Before that, he won one of the first battles against political corruption in Spain: back in 1992, he tried the Calviá case, involving the Popular Party's attempt to buy off a Socialist councilor to change a crucial vote in favor of further construction along the coast.

José Castro, a 66-year-old native of Córdoba who at one time learned kendo (a Japanese martial art), is a judge who commands respect. He has little inclination for public outpourings of feeling, and most likely did not enjoy the applause of the crowd the day he walked into the courthouse to question Urdangarin over his suspect business dealings.

"He rigorously respects the law and makes other people respect it, and he tries to get to the bottom of things," says one attorney.

A father of three - all of whom work in law and are European kendo champions - is separated from his wife and has a new partner. He is not affiliated with any judges' association or social forum.

Pepe Castro, as he often asks to be called, changed the nation's news agenda last Christmas, when he and the anticorruption attorney Pedro Horrach indicted Urdangarin on charges of embezzlement. Investigators suspect that using his non-profit Nóos Institute as a front, the royal consort and a business partner channeled six million euros' of public money from the Valencian and Balearic regions to their own private ventures.

Princess Cristina's husband spent a grueling 23 hours answering nearly 1,000 questions from Castro and Horrach on February 25 and 26. It was a historical moment in Spanish history: for the first time, a member of the royal family - albeit by marriage - was sitting inside a courtroom like any other citizen of Spain.

The meticulous, hardworking judge got to this point after pulling on the string of the Palma Arena case, involving the construction of a sports arena in Palma de Mallorca at overblown costs. Castro used all the resulting information to build as many as 25 separate criminal cases, including the one currently dogging Urdangarin. And he was able to do it quickly. Not in vain, Castro knows the system from the ground up. First he was a prison worker, then a court clerk, then a judge at a social court, and, since 1990 he has been an investigating magistrate. He has turned down promotions and appointments, preferring to stay where he is.

Castro has revealed an ability to go out on a limb. In the Calvià case, for instance, he accepted as evidence an audio recording in which the plaintiff had caught the criminals trying to bribe him. The judge put two people, including a Popular Party (PP) politician, on remand and set bail at 600,000 euros. A Palma court later found them guilty and the Supreme Court ratified the sentence.

He probably did not enjoy the applause the day he walked into the courthouse

In 1996, Castro investigated an offshoot of this case revealing further wrongdoing by regional PP leaders - but by then the crimes had prescribed.

"The preliminary investigation was magnificent," raves one of the plaintiffs in the Calvià case.

And yet the judge is plagued by a reputation that makes him out to be a disorderly investigator who is easily overwhelmed by the scope of the proceedings. A magistrate at the provincial court in Palma denies there is any truth in this belief: "It is not one of his traits to be a bad investigator. He is a good judge."

In 2010, Castro set former Balearic premier Jaume Matas' bail at three million euros and reproached him for appearing to "laugh at mere mortals" in connection with his role in the Palma Arena case. Matas, who ruled the Balearic Islands on two occasions in the name of the PP faces 12 counts of embezzlement, bribery of public officials, forgery, money laundering, tax fraud and other crimes.

It was Matas who partly dragged down Urdangarin - and as many people as he could find to deflect blame onto, which led the attorney Horrach to become indignant during the former premier's first trial over his "lack of scruples" when it came to his own accountability.

Under Matas, Urdangarin and his business associate, Diego Torres, using the non-profit Nóos Institute, obtained public contracts to organize sports events worth 2.3 million euros. Another 3.8 million euros in public money came from the Valencian government, also under PP rule. Investigators have since concluded that Nóos grossly overcharged for its services, and even produced phony invoices. Some of the money was channeled to tax havens after ending up in private business ventures owned by Urdangarin and Torres.

The legal tsunami grew in scope over the months, both because of the sheer magnitude of the case and because it involved a member of the royal family, which had remained untouched by scandal ever since the advent of democracy.

Urdangarin, a former Olympic handball champion, met Princess Cristina at the Atlanta Olympic Games and they were wed in 1997. It has emerged that King Juan Carlos asked him to drop his private business dealings several years ago, but that Urdangarin refused. Last December, the monarch announced he was leaving him out of all official events because his conduct was "not exemplary." In his Christmas address to the nation, Juan Carlos stated that "everyone is equal under the law."

He is principled and courteous. But in 30 years we never became friends"

Three months before that, in Castro and Horrach's inner circles, it was already seen as inevitable that Urdangarin would be involved after examining the documents seized at his companies and hearing statements from his associates at Nóos. Further statements from his accountant and his consultant at Aizóon, a real estate company he owns jointly with his wife, did not help his case. Besides that, the politicians with whom he negotiated contracts, both in the Balearics and Valencia, are themselves indicted on similar charges.

Castro has not been pressured nor has he received any calls over the Urdangarin case. "I didn't even get the usual New Year's call from a relative in the Supreme Court," he told a colleague.

He and Horrach have painstakingly built the Urdangarin case and divided it into sections and subdivisions, seeking out the needles in the haystacks made of thousands and thousands of documents, emails and invoices, besides dozens of statements from witnesses and suspects.

Horrach, 45, "is very brilliant, incisive and forceful; he is a capable man and a charming person," in the words of a judge from Mallorca. An independent agent like Castro, he is unaffiliated to any group and devoted to his work. On the personal front, he has a weakness for all ball sports - he has played squash, tennis and five-a-side soccer.

The son of a family of wealthy professionals who own several hotels, Horrach has a teenage daughter and is married to Ana Zácher, a civil servant from Bilbao whom he met in Madrid when both were studying for national examinations with a Supreme Court attorney named José María Luzón. "Horrach has a strong character and he does not back down, and his strategies can be on the crafty side," says a fellow lawyer. "When he is interrogating he is brilliant, with a lawyer's style."

The anti-corruption attorney's work is backed up by police officers who specialize in financial crimes, as well as tax inspectors, computer experts and civil guards, depending on the case in hand. He personally participates in surprise searches and conducts interrogations at police stations.

So does he go too far? A Catalan penal expert calls into question "the investigating role of the attorney, who interrogates suspects without lawyers being present." The same source talks of apparently "inquisitorial" actions by Judge Castro.

A businessman from Palma who was indicted over a scandal involving the regional political party Unió Mallorquina (UM) recounts his experience as a detainee facing Horrach: "He seemed rough and aggressive to me after my stay in the prison cell, where neither Jaume Matas, Maria Antònia Munar [former president of UM] nor Urdangarin himself were sent. Put that down in your newspaper!" he said.

This attorney interrogates suspects without lawyers being present"

Another businessman who faced both Horrach and Castro had this to say: "I will never forget the ordeal of having to go to court. Horrach and Judge Castro were tough but respectful. I don't think they know much about balance sheets, invoices or corporations. They seek but they shall not find."

In best Italian and North American style, Horrach reaches deals with indictees who confess and collaborate with justice, in exchange for shorter convictions should they be found guilty. As a matter of fact, Urdangarin's indictment was the result of a confession by his friend, Luis "Pepote" Ballester, a former athlete who negotiated his pal's million-euro proposals with Matas. On one occasion all three of them met at Marivent Palace, the royal residence in Palma, where they played paddle tennis and talked business.

A few days ago, Horrach's office refused to indict Princess Cristina, as requested by the far-right group Manos Limpias (which also brought the suit against Judge Baltasar Garzón that ultimately caused the crusading judge to be barred from the courts). Judge Castro has done the same. So far at least, Juan Carlos' youngest daughter is not suspected of actively participating in her husband's unlawful dealings.

In the complex chessboard that rules Spain's corruption cases, Judge Castro is aware that the Attorney General's Office, under Socialist and PP governments, stepped in on at least three occasions to prevent Matas being indicted while he was national environment minister and then Balearic premier. This office decided to leave him out of the Formentera case in 1999, involving the buying of votes for the PP among expats in Argentina. He was also excluded from a 2000 investigation into a case of espionage relating to Socialist email exchanges. In 2009 the office tried to veto his indictment in the Palma Arena scheme.

But then Castro requested to be handed the investigation into Matas' personal assets, combined this data with his own research into the sports arena irregularities, and indicted Matas of his own volition. Without that autonomous move by the judge, there would have been no Palma Arena case and no Urdangarin scandal.

Castro and Horrach's adversaries made their own moves to counter the blow. The judge made it unscathed through an investigation by the General Council of the Judiciary over alleged leaks of the case to the media. Matas filed a multitude of appeals, suits and complaints against him in an attempt to have him taken off the case. The former premier alleges that Castro feels "political phobia and manifest animosity" being directed toward him.

But Castro and Horrach are not progressives in judges' robes. There is no political rhetoric in their writs. A labor lawyer consulted by this newspaper said he did not know where Castro's political affinities lie: "He is impartial, independent and fair. He is one of the best; he studies his cases and does not let himself be swayed. He acts on his own principles and lets all sides have a say. He is courteous, affable and a hard worker. But in 30 years I never became friends with him."

Castro, Horrach and the attorneys Juan Carrau and Adrián Salazar have demonstrated sang-froid and thick skin. They have been the target of crude smear campaigns in fringe news outlets, and even accused of crimes. Two online newspapers from Mallorca, a far-right daily from Madrid and a TV channel sponsored by indictees in the Palma Arena case used a tailor-made report to spread rumors about Castro and Horrach and planted insidious doubts regarding their personal assets and their families. Libertad Balear published a photograph of Horrach's wife and questioned her appointment as head of the games and lottery department of the Balearic government under Matas. La Gaceta reported that Horrach and his wife had registered two properties for a much lower value than the bank's appraisal, in order to pay less tax.

But there were no actual complaints filed: they were just a trap to get these professionals removed from the case. The attacks have grown in scope with the Urdangarin tsunami. After taking statements from him for 23 hours, Castro left the courthouse at 3am on Monday, February 27 and drove off in a small black German-made sports car that he uses when he is not riding his bicycle. He had a light dinner in Es Molinar, looking out to sea, and read a novel to get his mind off the real-life plot he was trying.

Meanwhile, Horrach had a drink at a bar for night owls and went home to his attic in the higher district of Palma.

Following the Urdangarin marathon, Castro returned to his courthouse, glanced at the newspaper headlines and spat out: "I don't see myself reflected in this." It was his day off, and he spent an hour babysitting his two-year-old grandson.

"Pepe Castro is the best. He is my role model, the bravest of them all. He does not back down or lose heart with these complex cases," says a judge who is part of a group of 12 magistrates from Palma who have lunch together every Friday. "Wherever we go, he has praise heaped upon him." Attorney Horrach also gets stopped on the streets by people who want to congratulate him. They must be doing something right.