Begoña Trigo (1972) is a lawyer with a long professional career of 21 years practicing law in San Martin de la Vega. She created her own office (BTA Lawyers) after going through the Provincial Court of Madrid. This is her third candidacy for dean of the Madrid Bar Association.
QUESTION.- Why are you running for the Bar Association elections?
RESPONSE.- We are 13 public defenders of the 14 that form the candidacy and we have been practicing for more than 35 years. In our day to day we suffer many situations, we have to wait many hours of waiting, to enter the courts. Sometimes we receive replies or rude treatment. If we are sick they do not recognize us, when the fact of presenting the leave is more than enough document to suspend interviews or suspend deadlines. We are experiencing all these situations every day and this is the trigger, because over the last 20 years we have practically not improved our consolidation of rights. This has been the trigger to present ourselves to the candidacy and try to achieve once and for all evolve in the consolidation of our rights.
Q.- Society sees the figure of the lawyer as very distant or not very close. Are you going to take any action to change this?
A.- We are the only candidacy that emphasizes the social responsibility of the bar association. Society owes us a lot to the legal profession in general, both to lawyers from large firms and those from small and medium-sized ones. Because with our allegations and our interventions in the trials we obtain sentences that affect all the lawyers. We see that there are offices, large corporations and small and medium law firms that are dedicated to combating the usefulness of mortgage clauses in land clauses. In short, these are issues that affect society. We, in our program, have a proposal to create a specific ex officio shift to combat the claims of the Tax Agency. We all know the voracity of the Tax Agency in recent years and many of us have suffered from it and there is no institution, no body that is a point of resistance to these abuses. Citizens have to be aware of this work and therefore have to respect it, because many are unaware of the work of the legal profession.
Q.- Could this be because few people know the work of the lawyer?
A.- Yes, really what is known or the idea that the citizen has of the lawyer is the big corporation, the figure of the lawyer who appears in the movies who earns a lot of money. We do not face big corporations, we respect them and we understand that they have their place and I am personally very happy that they exist, but they do not suffer from the problems that 90% of us suffer, the rest of the lawyers that we practice, although they do go to judgment they do suffer from it.
Q.- On occasions you have commented that the legal profession needs a change of cycle. Are you referring to a change in attitude, generation, or a bit of everything?
R.- We have spoken expressly, as you well say, about change of cycle. We understand that both the legal profession and society need it. We are at a point where we have to evolve, we have to take a step further. There are still loopholes in forms, in my opinion, in politics, in the administration, that must be reformed and improved. And the legal profession is no stranger to social circumstances. We need a change of cycle and end the continuity, take an active participation in civil institutions. And the school is one of the pieces to develop democracy.
Q.- Do you think that the fact that digital voting has not yet been implemented can be seen as a strategy?
A.- Personally, I think so, because it is a measure that is in the programs of previous years, they have had time to install it and they have not wanted to. And I think it is not accidental. It is not by chance because elections are currently won with 3,000 or 4,000 votes, and establishing electronic voting means democratizing the college, expanding the possibility of voting, facilitating the possibility of voting. And I do not believe that this is the objective of the current Board or of the previous ones, because that way the voter is better controlled.