Supreme Court judge Isabel Perelló will be the next president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) after obtaining 16 of the 20 votes of the plenary session. A little over a month after taking office, the twenty new members have finally reached an agreement and have agreed that the magistrate of the High Court will occupy the highest seat of the Spanish judiciary for the next five years. The election has taken place after several unsuccessful attempts and will allow the institution to begin to function normally after years of disrepute. Catalan and with a progressive profile, Perelló is the first woman in history to preside over the governing body of judges.
The plenary session agreed on Tuesday to add Isabel Perelló to the list of candidates after it was impossible to find a name that could be agreed upon among the seven Supreme Court judges proposed last July during the last month. The list also included Supreme Court judge Ana Ferrer, who received four votes in the final vote on Tuesday. The election requires the support of three-fifths of the members of the plenary session. That is, at least 12 members.
Perelló is one of the most veteran judges of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, which she joined in 2009 after a decade working in the National Court and as a lawyer at the Constitutional Court. Considered to have a progressive profile, in the mortgage tax crisis of 2018 she opted to charge this tax to the bank and not to the client. “We must avoid that in the course of a few days the Supreme Court affirms one thing and its opposite, retracting itself, because then it will not convey to society the image that it does justice but that of sowing confusion,” said her dissenting opinion.
Two years ago, she was one of the nine Supreme Court judges who offered themselves as candidates for the Constitutional Court to unblock the partial renewal of the court of guarantees, at a time when the conservative sector blocked the appointment of new judges for months. She has been affiliated with Judges for Democracy for decades.
A month of negotiations
The talks, which have been ongoing throughout August, have intensified in recent days. Especially since Monday, when a long day of negotiations took place in which the majority accepted the conservative sector’s proposal to seek new candidates after it was impossible to find a consensus name among the seven Supreme Court judges proposed in July.
The difficulty in reaching an agreement has shown how, for the first time, the election of the presidency has not been the subject of an agreement between the two major parties. Until this eighth term, it was usual for the appointment of the presidency – which is formally made by the members – to be agreed in advance by the parties. But this time the decision has been left in the hands of the members of the body, who are also totally divided in half, with 10 appointed at the proposal of the PSOE and Sumar and another 10 at the initiative of the PP.
The complex negotiations that led to the final agreement also demonstrate the total importance that both blocs give to the figure in charge of directing an institution that manages a budget of close to 80 million euros and is responsible for choosing senior judicial officials and sanctioning infractions by judges.
Bolaños: “Magnificent news”
One of the first reactions to Perelló’s appointment was that of the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños. In a message on his X account – formerly Twitter – Bolaños said that it was “magnificent news” and that he was “very happy” that a woman was going to preside for the first time in history over the CGPJ and the Supreme Court. “Congratulations to Isabel Perelló and to all of us who believe in Justice as a public service!” wrote the Minister of Justice.
