The Regional Supreme Court (TSJA) has handed down a court sentence that gives Judge Del Arco just two months to demolish part of his house.

Ironically, Judge Del Arco had been in charge of the judicial proceedings against a controversial shopping centre, Nevada in Armilla, which had exceeded its maximum permitted building area, whilst he himself had been busy building an illegal extra floor to his house in Pinos Puentes.

If Judge, Miguel Ángel del Arco, does not remove the extra floor on his house in the two month period given, then the Town Hall will issue him a 600-euro fine, followed by twelve more fines as the clocks ticks on.

The judge himself launched an appeal against the Town Hall, which was lodged as the TSJA, but this top court sided with the Town Hall instead of their ‘colleague.’ Until then, judicially speaking, it had been going his way because the provincial law court had decided in his favour – it was this judicial decision that the TSJA has overturned.

The work on his house was halted in 2008 and it remains to this day in just the skeletal-structure stage. His building licence gave him permission for a semi-basement and a ground floor, but the judge decided to add a first floor, as well.

Meanwhile, Judge Alfonso Guevara, the presiding judge over the national criminal court in Madrid received a serious reprimand for threatening a defendant with a blow from a pistol butt (culetazo).

The ‘victim’ was a man being tried by the judge over narcotic charges and who must have been a bit boisterous, causing the judge to threaten the issue of  an order to the policeman in the courtroom to quieten the man with a blow from his service pistol.

The judge’s superiors consider that the gravity of the offense should earn the judge a 6,000-euro fine.

(News: Metropolitan Area, Granada)