Institutional respect between the executive and the judicial branch has been eroded. On December 4, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) will be five years old since its mandate expired; for days now the judges have been on a war footing against the amnesty and the insinuations of lawfare; Sumar – junior member of the Central Government – has denounced the conservative group of the Council for prevarication, and Pedro Sánchez has unified the Ministries of Presidency and Justice under the baton of Félix Bolaños, seen by a part of the judiciary as a provocation. With this staging, the new legislature begins, which portends a head-on clash between the two powers.
As Minister of Justice, Bolaños is tasked with trying to unblock the renewal of the governing body of judges, whose mandate expired in December 2018. His first move was to meet with the president in functions, Vicente Guilarte, as a sign of commitment to put an end to this situation, blames only the Popular Party, which has refused for years, already with Pablo Casado as leader of the opposition, to agree on an agreement of renewal with the PSOE.
Guilarte's situation is delicate. He came to the presidency of the CGPJ in July as the second carom after the resignation of Carlos Lesmes, who was replaced by Rafael Mozo, who retired in the summer. The current president opts for a moderate role and is inclined to renew the body. As he has said, he is no negotiator, because the renewal requires the appointment of twenty members by the Parliament by a three-fifths majority, which makes an understanding between the PSOE and the PP mandatory.
Even if he is not from the hard core, Guilarte is considered a member elected by the conservative wing. On Friday he left evidence to Bolaños that he will do everything he can so that there is a renewal as soon as possible. The problem is that the increasingly obvious confrontation between the central government and the CGPJ complicates Guilarte's role. Sources from the progressive sector of the Council explain that the president now has very little room for manoeuvre. The conservative majority group is increasingly belligerent, issuing statements without regard for the president. In fact, on Friday a group of members, sponsored by the member José María Macías, sent a letter to several representatives of the European Union in which it is stated that Sumar's complaint aims at his "personal and moral annihilation".
These sources explain that Guilarte is tied hand and foot because the conservative group acts on its own. "The Council has become a political weapon", laments a member of the body, who sees the actions of some members as the arm of the PP within the body. "Right now we are living the paradigm of everything that a Council should not be", laments this source, who remembers that the CGPJ of the Lesmes era, discreet and without entering into political battles, has disappeared.
There is a similar criterion from within the Spanish Government, which sees the conservative bloc as a "satellite" of the PP. Therefore, the future of this relationship is rather dark. "There is no way out", acknowledge CGPJ sources. Executive sources admit that the situation of confrontation with the PP, together with the role of the conservative members of the Council, makes it very difficult to get it renewed.
An idea that has been floating around for months among some socialist leaders is whether they should recover the proposal put forward by Podemos to change the majority system for the election of members, to avoid the pact with the PP. The President of the Central Government had discarded this option, once Europe sent a warning about the attack on judicial independence that this reform would entail.
Popular sources do not believe in the word of Sánchez and suspect that this alternative could appear on the table at any moment. Of course, what they assure is that today the blockade will remain. Over the last few years, the PP has used a series of arguments, different and varied depending on the moment, to block the renewal of the CGPJ.
The last one was the amnesty. These sources argue that a pact with the PSOE to change the members would now be impossible. They cannot send the message to their voters to negotiate with the socialists after they have succeeded in the investiture of Sánchez by granting amnesty to all those accused in the process. When the PP is bringing people to the streets to demonstrate against the amnesty and sees with deep concern the agreement between the PSOE and Junts to support commissions of inquiry against what the latter consider a judicial persecution of the leaders independentists, the popular people understand that now it would make no sense to agree on the renewal of the Council.
This confrontation is what Bolaños wants to resolve. However, the tension with the judiciary continues to grow. Although the minister has distanced himself from Sumar's complaint, sources from the conservative CGPJ bloc suspect that behind the actions of Yolanda Díaz's party there is indeed an acquaintance with Sánchez. "They play good cop and bad cop," says a source from the body. In addition, once the amnesty is approved, the focus will be on the judges, who must be the ones to apply it. "Then you will see that Bolaños' role is to seek an understanding or total shock", he concludes.
