Isabel Perelló has broken this Tuesday the most insurmountable glass ceiling that remained to be crossed in the judicial career: placing a woman at the top. Following the agreement reached by the progressive and conservative blocs of the governing body of judges, Perelló will be the first woman to preside over the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the Supreme Court, a milestone that many voices inside and outside the judiciary have been demanding for years and which comes when women are already a consolidated majority in the career (currently, 57%, but 73% among the members of the last promotion).
A judge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court since 2009, Perelló, 66, was previously serving in the third section of the Contentious Chamber, which resolves, among others, conflicts affecting regulatory bodies such as the National Securities Market Commission (CNMC) and the Bank of Spain. Although her candidacy was not among those promoted by the progressive sector of the Council in the first votes, sources from this group and from the high court consider her a judge with a clearly progressive profile and she has been a member of the association for years. Judges for Democracy (JJPD)which represents this sector of the race.
Before joining the Supreme Court, Perelló held positions at the Court of First Instance and Instruction of Mahón (Menorca), at the Provincial Court of Barcelona and at the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. A specialist in administrative litigation, she has also worked in the Administrative Litigation Division of the High Court of Justice of Andalusia based in Seville (1991) and in the National Court (1994). Between 1993 and 2003, she was a lawyer at the Constitutional Court.
The new president of the judges is considered an empathetic and discreet magistrate, who has kept a low profile in the Supreme Court, without seeking the limelight, but with leadership skills and a tact to achieve consensus. “She will do well as president,” predicts a colleague in the courtroom, who highlights her sensitivity on issues such as the environment and the protection of minors. She also does well in the defense of equality, a demand that ten years ago led her to star, together with two other magistrates (one of them the current Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles), in one of the few conflicts known to her in the high court: a letter sent to the then president of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes, complaining about his “sexist language” because in the documents sent to the race she expressed herself in exclusively masculine terms.
This judge born in Catalonia has a reputation for issuing “balanced and considered” rulings, according to a member of the high court. Among others, the one that last May ruled in favour of the Community of Madrid in the lawsuit it brought against the Government over the distribution of European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, intended to reactivate the economy after the health crisis caused by Covid-19. This ruling involved annulling the direct aid of six million euros granted by the central Executive to three communities (Extremadura, the Basque Country and the Valencian Community) on the grounds that the Government did not sufficiently justify why it granted the aid to these communities to the detriment of others. She was also the rapporteur of the ruling that rejected the PSOE’s appeal to try to recount the null vote in Madrid in the last general elections.
Perelló applied in 2022 to be a judge of the Constitutional Court during the renewal that was to be made to the CGPJ and that, given the lack of agreement between the members to elect the two judges that were assigned to her, ended up precipitating the resignation of Lesmes as president. At that time, Perelló’s name did not gather support and the judge remained in her position in the Supreme Court, where she has worked for 15 years in the shadows and of which she will now occupy the presidency.
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The magistrate faces two major challenges. The most urgent is to eliminate the vacancies that have decimated the judicial leadership in recent years due to the legal reform that banned discretionary appointments by the CGPJ while its mandate was extended. The most affected body is the Supreme Court, which has 25 of its 79 positions unfilled, which has left some of its chambers on the verge of collapse. The magistrates consulted are confident that the new Council will begin the selection procedures in the next few days so that these positions begin to be filled in the next few weeks.
The second major front that Perelló will have to face is to recover the credibility of the CGPJ, which was greatly damaged after five years of blockage in which the conservative sector ended up turning the body into a trench from which to oppose Pedro Sánchez’s Government. The first steps of the new Council, which has taken more than a month to agree on choosing its new president, have caused rejection in various sectors of the race for perpetuating the image of polarization of justice. It is now up to Perelló to lead the plenary session to try to reverse that image.