The ruling with which the Supreme Court annuls the dismissal of Diego Pérez de los Cobos leaves Fernando Grande-Marlaska no choice but to reinstate him in his post before submitting his resignation as interior minister. The ruling, notified yesterday and approved unanimously, endorses the conduct of the colonel and condemns in very forceful terms the purging of one of the most relevant figures of the Civil Guard. The judges reprimand the head of Interior for the "inadmissible

interference' in a judicial investigation. Despite this,

Marlaska has not only decided to lock himself in his post and avoid complying without delay with the decision of the Supreme, but has allowed himself to sow doubts about the colonel without providing any evidence.

. As this newspaper reveals today, Pérez de los Cobos is considering complaining against the minister after he suggested in Congress that he destroyed evidence for the benefit of the PP in the

Kitchen case

. A minister cannot launch snares against a particular individual, much less in parliament. In a State governed by the rule of law, charges are heard in court. The opposite is reprehensible, especially in a position of his height.

The colonel, a man valued within the Civil Guard for his record of services against terrorism and the separatist process in Catalonia, refused to break the law to respect the judicial mandate that obliged him to protect the development of a compromising cause for the Government, following the march of 8-M at the beginning of Covid. In his judgment

the Supreme Court stresses that the colonel was "under the orders of the magistrate who directed the instruction", which had prescribed "absolute confidentiality" and that "only inform her"

. No one escapes the fact that the minister, a former magistrate of the National Court, had perfect knowledge of the obligations assumed by Pérez de los Cobos as the Judicial Police, whose functions enjoy constitutional protection.

Marlaska's reaction shows that

prepares a formal reinstatement in office that can be immediately deactivated by another means

. The minister's reluctance both to submit his resignation and to immediately comply with the sentence places him in an ethically incompatible situation with remaining a member of the Council of Ministers, while leading the President of the Government to remove him from office.

Marlaska's numantine attitude does nothing but

aggravate an institutional deterioration that also worries the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

. In a report at the request of the PP that we reveal today, the OSCE points out that the reform of the Judiciary promoted by the Government, and paralyzed by the Constitutional, goes in the opposite direction to strengthen the independence of Justice, and calls the system of election of the members "extremely politicized".