"These almost five years of blocking the judiciary show that it has no political cost for the PP or the PSOE," laments a source from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), an idea shared by a large part of its members. Logic made its members think that once a government is formed, there will no longer be any argument to continue blocking the renewal of the governing body of judges. But what has become clear is that in this deep crisis of the judiciary, which has lasted since 2019, what is prevailing are partisan interests. And in this light, Council sources believe that the absolute majority of the PP in the Senate, but not in Congress, and the instability of a possible new coalition Executive are going to further deepen, if possible, the judicial crisis, instead of to solve it.
The reason is that the only thing that would allow the renewal of the CGPJ –which has been in office since December 2018 after five years in office– is an agreement between PSOE and PP since the twenty members that make it up must be appointed by a majority of three-fifths in both Congress and the Senate. After almost five years, the public allusions in this regard suggest that this agreement will not arrive in the short term, especially if, as consulted judicial sources fear, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, assumes that the new legislature will be short and he is tempted to maintain the blockade until after a new election.
Therefore, the other option that remains is for a legislative change to unblock the situation. However, sources from the body predict that given the current composition of the two chambers, this second option seems quite unfeasible. To begin with, the PP has closed in band to renew the twenty members of the organ because it insists that first the election system must be changed so that the judges are the ones who choose the members of the organ and then proceed to its renewal. But the current balance of forces in Congress makes Feijóo's plan unfeasible.
Parliamentary sources explain that there is an option that is for the PP to propose through the Senate the reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ). However, even if the proposal were approved in the Upper House, it would then have to be sent to the Congress of Deputies for its consideration, a process that if not passed, as is presumable, that path would remain dead.
The other possibility is that the PSOE together with Sumar unearth the proposal already presented and withdrawn in 2020 to change the three-fifths necessary for the election of the members to an absolute majority, so that it would go from needing 210 votes to 176. This way is not easy either. Firstly, because Pedro Sánchez has already decided to withdraw it before a notice from the European institutions about the political interference in the judiciary that this modification would entail. In addition, socialist sources, although they acknowledge that there are not many other options to fix this "lucky coup d'état" of the PP, as they call it, doubt the short-term opportunity of this reform as Spain is presiding over the Council of the European Union, which would mean putting yourself in the firing line of all criticism.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has not been able to fill the positions of magistrates who retire or die for more than two years and has already warned of the collapse that the highest court is heading towards, on its way to a paralysis with 80 vacancies. The last departure was that of Rosa María Virolés, acting president of the Fourth (Social) Chamber, due to forced retirement at the age of 72. In this Chamber there are already 22 vacancies, of the 79 that there are among all the rooms of the TS, 30 percent. To them will be added other vacancies due to imminent retirements. In its latest report on the rule of law in the EU, the European Commission once again emphasized the damage that this blockade is creating for the Spanish judicial system.
To this already complicated situation is added that the Government is in office and therefore the Ministry of Justice is practically paralyzed to claim support positions in the most affected rooms, to which is added the delay in the judicial processes created by the latter months after the strikes of justice administration lawyers and civil servants. In addition to avoiding a strike by judges, the lawyers' strikes ended after signing an agreement with the department headed by Pilar Llop for a salary increase. However, after the electoral advance, the Executive was in office before approving it and ministerial sources assure that the salary increase will have to wait for the new Executive to arrive, so it is not ruled out that these strikes will be reactivated after the return from vacation.
All this is generating a deep feeling of discomfort in the judicial career and the judiciary that will presumably be evident again in the speech of the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín, during his speech at the opening of the judicial year next Thursday, shot departure of the new course before King Felipe VI.
Last year, the then president Carlos Lesmes again demanded – as he had done in previous years – the unblocking of the CGPJ and threatened to resign if this did not happen. Weeks later, on October 10, 2022, he was leaving in an untenable situation and as a last attempt to get PSOE and PP to come to an agreement. A year later everything remains the same, or worse.
