The reception of King Felipe VI at the Royal Palace on the occasion of the celebration of Hispanic Day has served this Wednesday for the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the opposition, the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to establish positions of face of the urgent negotiation that both have in hand to renew the General Council of the Judiciary. The recent resignation of Carlos Lesmes, as president of the governing body of the judges and of the Supreme Court, has forced both to speed up the negotiations and thus resolve the crisis as soon as possible.
The first to do so has been Núñez Feijóo, who has demanded a written commitment from Pedro Sánchez that he will modify the election system for the members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) in six months as a condition to unblock and renew it.
In the huddles during the official reception, where the first information from last Monday's meeting has emerged, Pedro Sánchez has dispatched the proposal that, minutes before and in the same environment, the leader of the opposition had launched. "It is not a condition and it cannot be," he has argued.
In this line, the Executive has suggested that the PP "knows that it is not going to change" the election system and therefore ruled out any written commitment on a modification of the system to elect the CGPJ.
"We will have to find ways," he ventured, assuring that the Government has already opened up with the previous leadership of the PP to improve the system if necessary, but recalling, at the same time, that the proposals that the popular have taken to the Congress of Deputies in this sense they have been rejected by the parliamentary majority.
The president reiterated the "will" of the Government that there be an agreement, both to renew the CGPJ and the Constitutional Court, while indicating that the suitability criteria that the PP claims to improve in the voting system have never been a problem .
The Government and the PP came out hopeful and announcing an agreement to give a "last" boost to the renewal of the judicial body, which has already expired four years ago. Despite the optimism of both parties, Sánchez affirmed that it is not the first time that they have been close to an agreement. "We have to be cautious, but we can be facing a necessary agreement."
However, neither the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, nor the deputy secretary of the Popular Party for Institutions, Esteban González Pons, gave any clue in their subsequent press conferences as to what the pact would consist of. Although the interlocutors will be Bolaños and González Pons, their bosses will maintain continuous contact. The only concrete agreement is that, that the Government and the opposition address the renewal of the two constitutional bodies at the same time, something that the PP requested.
None of the interlocutors gave clues about the three-hour negotiation. The only more concrete advance was given by Feijóo with a tweet, in which he reported that "progress had been made to address the joint renewal of the CGPJ and the Constitutional Court with a new framework that deepens independence criteria", within which "it will be possible a legal reform as requested by the EU and the PP has been asking for months".
Hispanic Heritage Day has been somewhat overshadowed by the absence of some members of the judiciary. In the first place, the absence of the former president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and of the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes, has been noted due to his recent resignation and whose resignation has just been published in the Official State Gazette (BOE ). But this has not been the main casualty. The conservative bloc of the judicial body has not attended the appointment either due to discomfort due to the way in which the invitation was communicated, but they have attended the official reception at the Royal Palace.
The members would not have received the invitations until Tuesday to attend as a representative of the judiciary. For his part, Moncloa assures that the invitations were processed last Friday, but the transfer and the bureaucracy meant that they did not reach the hands of their recipients until Tuesday morning.
This situation has further damaged the relationship between the judiciary and the Executive due to the existing blockade, which has forced the president of the CGPJ to resign this Monday.
