The debate on amnesty in the 'process' and a CGPJ in decay mark the start of the judicial year

The Judiciary faces the new course with a bicephaly and a Supreme Court on the brink of collapse

MADRID, 6 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Justice inaugurates this Thursday a new course marked by the debate raised after Junts has demanded a law to amnestiate the 'proces' as a requirement to promote the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government, as well as by the process of decomposition in the that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) is immersed, which has had its mandate expired for almost five years.

The act, which will be held at 12:00 p.m. in the Supreme Court (TS), will be chaired by King Felipe VI and the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, will intervene to present the report on the activities of the Public Ministry in 2022 , and the interim president of the TS, Francisco Marín Castán, to open the new judicial year.

Among the attendees will be the interim president of the CGPJ, Vicente Guilarte, as well as various authorities from the judicial field. And, on the political level, the acting Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, and the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as well as various institutional representatives will attend.

Although until now the main concern within the Judiciary was the situation of blockade around the renewal of the CGPJ, which should have occurred on December 4, 2018, and the consequences that the political instability caused by the electoral results of December 23 of July they could have in the same, the possibility of an eventual amnesty has fully burst into the debate.

From the outset, according to legal sources, in the Supreme Court they have run out of "adjectives" to describe the visit that the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, made to the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont last Monday in Brussels to obtain the support of Junts for Sanchez's inauguration. A day later, the independence leader set his conditions: an amnesty law and the end of the judicial process, for which he appealed directly to the State Attorney's Office.

And it is that an eventual amnesty for the events that led to the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017 would mean erasing the events for which the Supreme Court sentenced the former Catalan vice president Oriol Junqueras and eleven other pro-independence leaders in 2019, and for which the high The court is still persecuting Puigdemont and the other fugitives from 1-O.

In addition, this year the Judiciary will start the course again with a CGPJ in office. Carlos Lesmes inaugurated it like this up to four times as president of the TS and the CGPJ. On this occasion (the fifth) Marín Castán will be in charge of doing so, as interim head of the Supreme Court and in the presence of the person who now holds the alternate presidency of the CGPJ, Guilarte.

This bicephaly in the Judiciary --anomalous but not unprecedented-- occurred on October 9, when Lesmes resigned after his frustrated attempts to get the PSOE and PP to agree to renew the CGPJ. Precisely, it was at the opening of the legal year of 2022 when he announced that he would resign if he had not achieved his goal within a month.

The position of president of the TS and the CGPJ, which is held by the same person, was split because the members of the governing body of the judges refused to accept Marín Castán, who was then interim vice president of the Supreme Court, as their new boss. Thus, they chose to enthrone their oldest vocal, at that time Rafael Mozo.

According to the sources consulted by Europa Press, the hopes of renewal of the CGPJ were deposited in the post-electoral period, especially in view of the expectation of a change of Government, but the scenario drawn by 23-J has put an end to them, drawing the same situation of paralysis as before the appointment with the polls.

Thus, and if no one remedies it, the CGPJ will fulfill five years with the expired mandate on December 4, the same as the current mandate, a scenario that the sources directly describe as "shame." For this reason, Marín Castán is expected to allude to it in his speech, something that Lesmes did year after year, raising his tone until he finally resigned.

The seriousness of the situation lies not only in the prolonged interim status of the CGPJ and the lack of expectations of a political agreement, but also in the fact that during this extra five years the Council has gone from having 20 members and a president to having only 16 members, including its interim president. Along the way, it has suffered the retirements of Rafael Fernández Valverde and Mozo, the resignations of Lesmes himself and Concepción Sáez, as well as the death of Victoria Cinto.

The crisis worsened on July 19, due to the forced retirement of Mozo. Following the rules that the members themselves established to elevate the progressive member in their day, they appointed Guilarte as the new substitute president of the CGPJ, for being its oldest new member, although not without the corresponding internal struggle to guarantee that he would dedicate himself to his new roles exclusively, which led him to quit his jobs as a teacher and lawyer.

In the governing body of the judges they trusted that, given this bicephaly, Guilarte would be the one to inaugurate a new course, as he is the head of the Government of the Judiciary, although this task has fallen to Marín Castán because -the Supreme Court emphasizes- - it is always done by the head of the high court.

In these five years, the governing body of judges has also seen its functions reduced since in 2021 the Courts approved a reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) that prevents the CGPJ from making discretionary appointments while it has expired. The legislator only gave him back --in an express counter-reform-- his powers to designate his two candidates for the Constitutional Court (TC), in order to avoid a crisis also in the TC.

All in all, the CGPJ is still unable to make discretionary appointments in the judicial leadership, which has already accumulated 84 casualties, with the bloody case of the Supreme Court, which adds 23 vacancies in all its chambers: 2 in Civil, 1 in the Criminal, 11 in the Contentious-Administrative, 6 in the Social and 3 in the Military -- with the effective retirement this Thursday of magistrate Fernando Pignatelli --.

Despite this, the high court continues with its usual workload and tries to deal with the accumulated vacancies. According to a report from the Technical Cabinet of the Supreme Court, only with the casualties in two of its chambers, a total of 1,230 fewer sentences will be handed down in 2023 --570 in Litigation and 660 in Social--.

Among the issues pending resolution by the Supreme Court, the Euro-orders against Puigdemont and his former adviser Toni Comín stand out. The investigating judge of the 'procés', Pablo Llarena, already warned last July that he will not rule on the matter until the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) rules on the possible precautionary measures that both can present to see provisionally restored his parliamentary immunity.

It is also pending in turn for the Contentious-Administrative Chamber to rule on the suitability of the pardon granted by the Government to Junqueras in 2021.

On the sidelines, it is expected that on November 15 the Criminal Chamber will hold a hearing to address the appeal of those convicted of the attacks of August 17, 2017 in Catalonia.