A fierce, relentless legal battle will determine the course of the legislature.

Last year ended a long list of pending cases in the courts, only eased by the vacations of judges and political leaders and the disaster of the fires that filled the media headlines with smoke and ash. Already almost extinguished, tomorrow everything will return to square one, with the former PSOE organizational secretary in jail, the attorney general about to go to court, as will the romantic partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, and the investigation opened against former PP minister Cristóbal Montoro and his entire team.

El y tú más, which has been a key player in parliamentary debate in recent months, is back. It's been said for some time that politics has become judicialized. This doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.

Opening of the judicial year. An attorney general in the spotlight.

The first scene of this new event will feature Álvaro García Ortiz, Attorney General of the State. Next Friday, September 5th, the opening of the judicial year will be held, a solemn ceremony presided over by King Felipe VI at the Supreme Court. President Isabel Perelló on one side and the Attorney General on the other will deliver their respective speeches.

There is almost unanimous opinion within Spain's highest court that the presence of an attorney general prosecuted for the crime of revealing secrets at this event is detrimental to the justice system in general.

The opening of the judicial year will be a turning point with the attendance of an indicted attorney general

Even more so if Supreme Court Judge Ángel Hurtado agrees to open a trial against García Ortiz this week, once the Criminal Chamber confirmed his indictment at the end of July. Until now, García has refused to resign, convinced of his innocence in the case. The government has also expressed its full confidence in him, believing him to be the victim of a setup by Díaz Ayuso's entourage.

García Ortiz faces up to six years in prison for allegedly revealing private information to the press about González Amador, the romantic partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, whose future is also pending in the courts.

The opposing side. González Amador, alleged fraudster

It's likely that the Popular Party will use the Attorney General's case to attack the government, given that the appointment was made by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whom they accuse of using the Prosecutor General's Office for his political wars. However, this attack will have its flip side in the form of González Amador, who has failed to stop the two criminal cases he has open following his strategy of accusing the Attorney General.

The People's Party (PP) will have to face accusations of fraud involving Ayuso's boyfriend, and the indictment of Montoro and Kitchen.

Although the Supreme Court has decided that García Ortiz will be forced into the dock, his future doesn't look much better. Before retiring, the investigating judge in the case against Díaz Ayuso's partner confirmed the charges against him for two counts of tax fraud and one count of document falsification. This latest ruling must be reviewed by the Madrid Provincial Court, which will finally decide whether he will be tried for defrauding 350,000 euros, for which the Prosecutor's Office is seeking a four-year prison sentence. He also has another open case involving alleged corruption linked to the Quirón healthcare group.

At the epicenter of the PSOE. Cerdán's long wait

The president of the People's Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has enough material to relentlessly attack a Pedro Sánchez, who has been shaken by the unconditional imprisonment of Santos Cerdán on June 30. The former Socialist leader was the right-hand man of the PSOE general secretary during this last term and is the person who negotiated Sánchez's investiture with Carles Puigdemont in exchange for an amnesty. He was also one of the driving forces behind the relaunching of the parliamentary investigation into the so-called Operation Catalunya, which implicated the PP during Mariano Rajoy's term as prime minister.

After a summer in Madrid's Soto del Real prison and with no sign of an imminent release, these months will be crucial to see whether the former PSOE organizational secretary maintains his strategy of denying that he, along with former minister José Luis Ábalos and the latter's advisor Koldo García, formed a corrupt network. In an interview with La Vanguardia , he denied having done anything illegal or that the alleged bribes were used to illegally finance the party.

Pedro Sánchez will be closely monitoring Santos Cerdán's next moves to get out of prison.

At any moment, Cerdán could change his strategy in pursuit of freedom, as did another of the suspects in this case, businessman Víctor de Aldama. He was the first to decide to lift the veil and admit to the bribes in exchange for a deal with the Prosecutor's Office.

Cerdán will also have to keep an eye on the information provided by former activist Leire Díez, who is being investigated for carrying out maneuvers against officials of the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard and members of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. This police unit is responsible for investigating several matters currently affecting both the government and President Sánchez's family members. Díez has been summoned to testify before the Senate on September 8.

Family Cases. Begoña Gómez and David Sánchez

There will be no respite for Sánchez's family members under investigation this term. Judge Juan Carlos Peinado has just added another crime against the president's wife, Begoña Gómez, bringing the total number of crimes for which she is being investigated to five. In the case of his brother, David Sánchez, a trial date has yet to be set for allegedly being appointed head of the Badajoz Provincial Council's performing arts office.

Amnesty returns. Puigdemont remains in Waterloo.

Many voices assumed that former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont would return to Spain in August. Now more than ever, his return with full guarantees is crucial for the government because Junts' votes are decisive for numerous executive projects, particularly the budget. However, the Junts leader has not wanted to risk returning for fear that the Supreme Court could end up imprisoning him.

Although the Constitutional Court has already endorsed the amnesty, Puigdemont's situation is not entirely clear. The high court considers that the leaders of the independence process misappropriated public funds to organize the October 1, 2017, referendum and that this money was used to further their own political careers. This is the high court's argument to justify that the acts of which the former president is accused fall within the exceptions—the crime of embezzlement—established in the law of forgetting, and therefore he cannot be amnestied.

The Supreme Court's position must also be reviewed by the Constitutional Court through the appeals for constitutional protection filed. Court sources estimate that these will begin to be reviewed between September and October. Although Supreme Court sources assure that if Puigdemont were to return, he would most likely be released after being brought before a court, the former Catalan president is not willing to take the risk and discredit that spending time behind bars after seven years in Waterloo would entail.

The long story of the 3%. The Pujols' trial after a decade.

In two months, the National Court should hear Jordi Pujol i Soley, 95, sitting in the dock for hiding money in Andorran banks. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office argues that the money came from corruption during his 23 years as president of the Generalitat. His children will sit alongside him. Pujol has always maintained that the money came from an inheritance from his father that he had not declared to the Treasury.

Due to his advanced age, we will have to wait until the last minute to see if the National Court exempts the former president from facing trial. They are seeking nine years in prison, but the person in the worst situation is his eldest son, Jordi Pujol Ferrusola, for whom the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is seeking 29 years in prison. The trial is expected to be long, with 245 witnesses testifying.

Another PP front. Montoro, pending declaration

Last July, it was revealed that a judge had charged former PP Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro and his former team with leading an organization that allegedly modified laws and regulations in exchange for financial benefits.

The judge of Tarragona's Investigative Court No. 2 suspects the existence of an organization in which many of those involved held high-ranking positions in the government and central administration, "from which they would have created a network of influence whose ultimate goal would be financial gain." Montoro's defense team will attempt to have the case annulled because the judge has kept it secret for seven years. The judge has yet to summon the suspects to testify while the Tarragona Court decides how far the investigation should go. The judge has opted to limit it to influence peddling. However, some people, such as former minister Rodrigo Rato, have called for an investigation into whether Montoro used the Tax Agency to act against his political enemies.

Time will tell. The Kitchen will arrive in spring.

It won't be until spring of next year that another former minister, in this case Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz, will be brought to trial, along with his former deputy, Francisco Martínez, and the then police leadership, for orchestrating a paramilitary operation to steal documentation from former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas regarding the party's secret funds that could compromise Rajoy.