The president of the General Council of the Judiciary, Carlos Lesmes, yesterday offered once again what should be his farewell speech, in the framework of the opening of the judicial year. Lesmes lamented that “the permanent lack of agreement of the majority political groups”, in an equidistant reproach to PSOE and PP, has paralyzed the renewal of the CGPJ’s expired mandate and with it that of dozens of court presidencies and that of part of the members of the Constitutional Court. Flank, and not less, the latter, who these days is living a pulse for which the president of the CGPJ could well have added a third recipient of his criticism: the paralysis due to another no less entrenched blockade in the high ranks of the judiciary in which political alignments and purely corporate or personal interests are mixed.
For the first time the resignation of Lesmes (not of the plenary session of the body he presides over, which in his opinion would be an irresponsible dereliction of duties) has openly placed himself on the table as an instrument of pressure. This time with another accusation incorporated, and not exactly equidistant. The claim that the renewal so many times blocked is not subject to a future reform of the election mechanism, Given the breakdown that the situation is causing in the normal functioning of the judiciary, thus pointing to the justification raised by the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to ruin the hopes of an agreement that had been raised. On the other hand, in his speech he also confronted the demands for dejudicialization of the Catalan conflict. A concept that would be questionable if it were interpreted as impunity in the face of any violation of the law, but which must continue to be vindicated as proof that the solution must come through politics and that certain judicial actions or criminal offenses are more than susceptible to criticism and review.
Neither of the two (actually more) parties involved in the institutional blockade are exempt from responsibility, and although the evidence that the Popular Party has only facilitated the renewals of the plenary session of the CGPJ when it was in a position to obtain a conservative majority and has blocked them in the opposite situation would force him to be blamed (and to doubt that he will lend himself to making a move before the next elections), the effort to reach an agreement should not be claimed solely from him.
In a state of institutional normality in the field of justice, the leading role in the opening act of the judicial year should correspond to to the analysis of the memory of the prosecution that yesterday was in the background. That is, to the indication of the insufficiencies as a public service, still far from recovering the already insufficient pre-pandemic rhythm. To the identification of underlying problems in our society of which open procedures are a symptom. Like the 27% increase in those associated with hate crimes and discrimination, one derived from a climate of polarization that, with the networks as an expeditious vehicle, poses a first-order threat not only to the victims but also to democratic coexistence. Or the 50 women murdered in cases of gender-based violence and the 31 orphans that these crimes have left behind, figures of which the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, María Ángeles Sánchez Conde, recalled that “they are not statistics, they are human lives.” Something that should not be forgotten either when assessing the consequences of the political and corporate blockade of the functioning of justice.