The Official State Gazette (BOE) published this Saturday the forced retirement due to age of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, one day before turning 72, and with a career marked in its final stage by investigating and sending Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, to trial before a popular jury.
The publication by the BOE of the order of the General Council of the Judiciary declaring Peinado's forced retirement due to age comes one day after the judge spent his last day in the Court of Instruction 41 in Madrid.
Previously, this week he enjoyed three days of leave once he issued his last decision on Monday: the order to open a trial for alleged influence peddling and embezzlement against Begoña Gómez and her advisor.
As planned, and after his summer vacation, he thus put an end to an instruction that was not without controversy, in which he compared the case of Begoña Gómez with behavior “more typical of absolutist regimes” and the reign of Fernando VII.
In these two and a half years, in which he asked for permission to extend his retirement up to the legal maximum, Peinado has gone to La Moncloa to question the President of the Government and the Minister of Justice - whom he even asked to charge without success -, he has charged seven people, including the Government delegate in Madrid, and has investigated five crimes.
With controversial decisions such as summonses on Saturday, Sunday or Holy Wednesday, Peinado received setbacks, but also endorsements from the Madrid Court, which has finally confirmed that Begoña Gómez's trial will be before a jury.
Although known in the judicial environment of Madrid, Juan Carlos Peinado was unknown to the general public until the complaint by Manos Liminas against Begoña Gómez came to his attention in April 2024.
That case has marked the final stretch of his career in the judiciary, to which he arrived late, at the age of 40, after having worked as a lawyer and as secretary of the City Council of several Madrid municipalities.
He retires as an investigating judge from Court 41 in Madrid, in Plaza de Castilla, where he has been for the last decade. Before that, he went through courts in Ávila, Toledo, Albacete and Madrid, according to legal sources consulted by EFE.
Since '41 he has handled other cases also known at the time, such as the triple crime in a law firm in the Madrid neighborhood of Usera in 2016 - which ended up being tried in Venezuela - or a lawsuit, already filed, against councilors Pablo Soto and Guillermo Zapata for offensive messages on social networks in 2015.
It even opened proceedings against former soccer player Raúl González Blanco for alleged concealment of assets and the accusation, in 2019, of journalists for alleged revelation of secrets linked to the summary of the Committees for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), already archived, was heard.
A case against a charge from the Madrid municipal transport company (EMT) ended up being archived after the investigation period expired, and has also investigated the alleged hacking of the emails of the partner of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, or a complaint by Hazte Oír against the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, for the stoppage of a protest bus.
At the end of his career, Peinado has received several complaints for prevarication and also complaints before the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), such as that of Minister Félix Bolaños, in the context of his investigation of Begoña Gómez, but none have been successful.
