Efrén Díaz Díaz

Studying, thinking, defining a legal and secure strategy, searching for and learning about the most appropriate and innovative analogue and digital tools to guarantee people's rights and freedoms is the guideline that guides my day to day, even if there are valley days and peak days.

The most common question is often "whether this legal case is viable".

Often, the practice of law in technological and geospatial issues and problems involves "breaking new ground" in approaches, procedures, legal strategies or legal defence. I share with many of my colleagues that "every issue is always new", even if it is new in different ways.

I remember some "difficult" cases that at first seemed "impossible" to me, also for the colleagues I was able to ask for guidance at the time, but that soon after generated some regulatory and jurisprudential changes in the technological field in relation to the fundamental right to privacy, in general, and the right to be forgotten, in particular.
I also remember a complex case of flooding that affected more than fifty people, more than a dozen families. It involved personal, family, medical and forensic, legal, architectural, geospatial and engineering issues. It involved more than 7 years of work and more than 22,000 pages of files, of which I was aware on the day of the long trial when I could count the almost 25 folders, because working without paper and with digital folders sometimes does not let you see how the volume grows, as the laptop always weighs and physically occupies the same.
At the beginning of the case, the day we were able to visit the affected area left me with the vivid memory of a baby saved from the catastrophe in the arms of its mother, a mother tremendously damaged by what would later be diagnosed as chronic post-traumatic stress. That image remained very much alive and continuously pulsating during the legal proceedings, the forensic, architectural and engineering experts' reports; during the phases of the claims for damages in the administrative courts and then in the courts, in the first and second instance. In a second instance in which not only an ex novo review took place, but also in which we were able to obtain the practice of evidence that had been denied and other evidence that was not practiced in the first instance.
Finally, the day we were able to return to communicate to all the neighbours, in a plenary meeting, the sentence won on appeal, I realised that the 7-year-old boy who opened the door of the urbanisation to me was the baby for whom we achieved judicial recognition of moral and personal damages, together with his mother and other relatives, as well as a broad sentence of compensation for physical, material and moral damages.
In this case, the challenging challenge, since from the beginning it was easier to take it for lost, was to repair the injustice caused by "the insufficient and reckless municipal action in the area of the affected urbanisation", as recognised by the Judgment of the competent High Court of Justice, which was not appealed by the Municipal Administration that was condemned. At the end of the judicial process, the neighbours who were affected and then repaired, as well as the lawyers who were able to walk the path with them, were able to see that the effort made, besides not being small, had been worth it.

Having the good fortune to work as head of the technological, geospatial and spatial areas of a law firm with a long history of excellence entails the responsibility of "overcoming the fear of the impossible". Legal and judicial practice leads me to think that "the only impossible thing is that which is not attempted", at least for the first time. Thus, in the practice of law I find it more interesting to "dare the impossible".