Carlos Lesmes has been the president of General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and of Supreme Court that has held this position the longest in our democracy, almost nine years. This Monday will formalize his resignation after an agonizing end of term at the head of a body divided and degraded by the political class and especially by the leaders of the PP, who have been postponing the renewal that corresponded by constitutional mandate, and who were precisely the ones who placed him in office.
Madrilenian, 64 years old, comes from a a family of Extremaduran origin with strong Christian convictions, more linked to medicine than to the world of law. After passing the oppositions to judge and prosecutor, he came to practice as head of the Public Ministry in the Constitutional Court – the body to which he aspired to return as a magistrate – between 1992 and 1993, but his specialty is contentious-administrativewhich he has served in high instances such as the National High Court -he presided over the Chamber specializing in this area- and in the Supreme Court since 2010. In fact, it’s the where you will return once he has completed his term on the Council.
But his most criticized profile, especially from sectors of the left, is the politician, since Lesmes held positions of responsibility in governments of Jose Maria Aznar. Between 1996 and 2000 he was General Director of Conscientious Objectionwhile during the second popular legislature he served as General Director of Relations with the Administration of Justice.
From there he went on to occupy his judicial responsibilities in the National Court and the Supreme Court. His arrival at the high court was not, however, peaceful, since his appointment by his own CGPJ was challenged by María Asunción Salvo, suspended president of the Sixth Section of the National Court, who did not agree with the reasons for choosing Lesmes and three other magistrates among all those who opted for the position.
In the sentence issued on his appointment by the Supreme Court, which he reported on at the time Europe Pressdownplayed the fact that he had served as General Director of Conscientious Objection and later of the Department of Relations with the Administration of Justice during the government of José María Aznar.
“It appears from the proceedings that It has been his professional background that has led to his appointment“, highlighted the Supreme then, adding that the appellant did not offer the data that would indicate that the CGPJ acted with respect to Lesmes “for reasons other than the selection of the most qualified applicant based on merit and ability“. During his time in the High Court, he highlighted his presentation of the sentence that in March 2011 illegalized Sortu –formation of the abertzale left-, a decision that was annulled by the Constitutional Court a year later. On December 13, 2013, he took possession at the height of his careeras president of the Council and, therefore, of the Supreme Court, with the vote of 16 of the current members of this body. It was imposed on the also magistrate of the Third Chamber of the high court, Pilar Tesso, whose name always appears in the pools as a candidate for the position, also in the face of the next renewal. During the formal ceremony held in the high court, he chose as godparents the then oldest magistrate, Aurelio Toothless; and the most modern, José Juan Suay.
Absolute power
Unlike his predecessors in office, and also those who will replace him in it, Lesmes has accumulated during his mandate a power that some have criticized for being close to the “absolute”, by presiding over a body whose members are not all exclusively dedicated After a legal reform promoted during the stage of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón in Justice that has already been revoked. Said reform, according to his detractors, built an excessively “presidentialist” CGPJ.
They only have this dedication of a particular nature seven members of the Standing Committee of the Council -in previous bodies this key nucleus was made up of only five people-, and it is Lesmes who decides who is part of it. Throughout these nine years, matters of great relevance that in previous mandates used to be seen in plenary session have been addressed in the aforementioned Commission, and not all the members have been part of it.
One of the most critical moments of his mandate, even before it became clear that the delay in the renewal was far from being resolved in a few months, are the institutional reactions that occurred in the face of certain manifestations of the government partners, especially when the vice presidency was held by Pablo Iglesias.
Attention calls to churches
Thus, on January 15, 2020, just two days after Iglesias took office, the Council approved an unusual institutional declaration asking him for “prudence” in his manifestations and urged him to avoid the political use of Justice. He was thus responding to some statements in a radio interview in which the then vice president stated that decisions of the European courts in relation to the process independence movement in Catalonia had left the Spanish Justice “in a bad place”, which supposed a “humiliation for the State”.
These calls for attention were repeated on other occasions, and they had not been the first to come out of a body chaired by Lesmes. In April 2108, this body asked the then popular Minister of Justice Rafael Catalá for restraint, after he also said in an interview that the magistrate of the Provincial Court of Navarra who issued the private vote in In the case of ‘La Manada’, Ricardo Martínez had some “unique problem” and “everyone knows it”.
Faced with what seemed to be in harmony with those who elected him as president of the third power of the state, Lesmes has recently adopted a eminently institutional position that seems to have distanced him from the Popular Party. In Council sources, some point out that the origin of the estrangement can be found in the summer of 2017, when the former president’s statement Mariano Rajoy in the first trial of Gürtel plot, which he could not avoid, and has been increasing in relation to the programming of the debates on law reports and lately for a very critical position with the positions of the formation led by Paul Married and today for Alberto Núñez Feijóo opposed to reaching an agreement to renew the body.
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This defense posture of the institution has come crystallizing in the last four speeches of Lesmes before the King on the occasion of the opening of the judicial year, those who have corresponded with the institution already out of mandate. In the last one, where the anger at the current paralysis has been more evident -especially due to the consequences in a Supreme Court at a minimum, which can accumulate twenty vacancies if no appointments have been made by the end of the year- it was when he advanced his possible resignation, as a decision “that they do not like” in the face of the situation of “unsustainable” institutional blockade.
The end has also coincided with a Council that is undoubtedly fractured, limited in its functions since March 2021, with two fewer members -due to a death and a retirement of members that Parliament has refused to replace- and with a conservative sector, which is the majority, positioned in a situation of “rebellion” against the last reform promoted by the Government to achieve the corresponding renewal in the Constitutional Court. All this has made Lesmes consider his desired retirement from this body as lost, where he aspired to the position that remains vacant after the resignation of Judge Alfredo Montoyaof the PP share in the Senate.