He new General Council for the Judiciary has nominated seven Supreme Court justices as candidates to preside over the administrative body of judges. Pilar Teso, Pablo Lucas, Carmen Lamela, Ángeles Huet, Ana Ferrer, Antonio del Moral and Esperanza Córdoba are the candidates to preside over the organization in a decision that the Council is expected to take next Tuesday.
Three of the candidates come from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court: conservatives Antonio del Moral and Carmen Lamela and progressive Ana Ferrer. Del Moral and Ferrer were part of the court that judged and sentenced the trial, while Lamela was the first magistrate to order Junqueras' imprisonment when he served in the National Court.
The other four candidates come from the controversial administrative chamber: Pilar Teso, who was already a candidate in 2013, Ángeles Huet, Esperanza Córdoba and Pablo Lucas.
The 20 new members of the Council They arrived at twenty to one in a minibus at the Governing Body of Judges, after having taken the oath and promised their position in Zarzuela before the King and the President of the Government. In the last hours, departing members such as Pilar Sepúlveda or Clara Martínez de Careaga have left the building with their belongings and suitcases, to say goodbye to the employees of the Governing Body of Judges. Vicente Guilarte, the last president of the recently renewed Council, has also entered the building and has refused to make any statements about the renewal: “I don’t know anything, I’m nobody,” he said, laughing.
Franco's excavation
The General Council of the Judiciary now has a week to vote and appoint the next president. All candidates come from two chambers of the Supreme Court that have tried and sentenced important issues in the last ten years, such as the independence process, several separate pieces of the Gürtel case, the Andalusian ERE or the exhumation of Franco's body.
Pilar Teso has been a judge since 1985. Teso, one of the most respected members of the controversial administrative chamber, was already a candidate to preside over the ruling body of judges in 2013, when the chosen one was Carlos Lesmes, her colleague in the chamber. On that occasion, more than ten years ago, Teso received four votes, compared to the sixteen with which he became president Carlos Lesmes.
Teso is considered to have a progressive profile and, together with Pablo Lucas, formed part of the court In 2019, he supported the exhumation of Franco's body. Two other colleagues from the Third Chamber complete the shortlist of candidates: Esperanza Córdoba and Ángeles Huet. The first arrived at the Supreme Court in 2020 and was previously head of the Inspection Service of this organization. Huet joined the Supreme Court on the same day as Córdoba. Two of the last appointments made by the Supreme Court before a judicial reform prevented him from making acting appointments.
Pablo Lucas, for his part, has been a Supreme Court judge for many years, in charge of coordinating relations with the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) and supervising and authorising, in practice, certain investigation procedures into Spanish espionage. Among other things, he authorised the CNI's wiretapping of Pere Aragonès and Oriol Junqueras.
The trial, the ERE and the amnesty
The three candidates of the Criminal Chamber have also signed some of the most relevant decisions of the last decade. Ana Ferrer, the first woman to enter this chamber of the Supreme Court, is considered to have a progressive profile and was part of the court that convicted and sentenced the Catalan independence process of 2017. Recently, cast a personal vote against the conviction of the former Andalusian president, José Antonio Griñán, for embezzlement, and has spoken out in favor that the amnesty forgives this crime in the case of the persecuted Catalan independence leaders.
Antonio del Moral, with a conservative profile and very close to Manuel Marchena, was also part of the court that sentenced the trial. Among other things, he will preside over the ruling on the PP's 'box B' and the black reform of the party headquarters now chaired by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Carmen Lamela, for her part, was part of the court that judged and sentenced the ERE of Andalusia and, before reaching the Supreme Court, the National Court, issued the first arrest warrant against Oriol Junqueras.
Justice Minister Félix Bolaños referred to this agreement on Thursday: “Today is a great day for Spanish justice. “We are finally saying something we never seemed able to say: the Judicial Council has been renewed.” In statements to the media
Regarding the presidency of the new Council, Bolaños explained: “Now is the time for the members of the Council to speak, to dialogue and to agree on the figure of the new president, something they will do in the coming days, as prescribed by law.”