MADRID (Reuters) -Spanish prosecutor general Alvaro Garcia Ortiz will be tried in early November over allegations of leaking confidential information in a tax fraud case involving the partner of a leading opposition figure, the Supreme Court said on Friday.

Garcia Ortiz says he is innocent and has the backing of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has publicly defended him on numerous occasions.

Forty people, including eight prosecutors and 12 reporters, have been called to testify as witnesses in the trial, one of several judicial woes besetting Sanchez’s government. A trial of the country’s prosecutor general is unprecedented since Spain’s return to democracy in 1978.

The case against Garcia Ortiz is at the heart of frictions between Spain’s leftist national government and Isabel Diaz A

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