Judge Carlos Lesmes is packing his bags to leave the presidency of both the Spanish Supreme Court and the country's General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ): that is, to consummate the threat to resign which he made before king Felipe VI at the ceremonial opening of the new judicial year. In fact, it is already known who will replace him in the event that the resignation is confirmed, following the long-running deadlock between the two largest Spanish political parties, the PSOE and the People's Party, on new appointments to the CGPJ. Lesmes himself has commissioned a report from the judicial governing body's Technical Cabinet to find out who must relieve him. The text determines that the role must be assumed by the oldest judge presiding over one of the Supreme Court's chambers. This position corresponds to Francisco Marín Castán, of the court's civil chamber, who is currently vice-president of the Supreme Court. The report commissioned by Lesmes states that the president of the Council is readying his resignation, speaking of "his possible substitution". Lesmes - whose mandate to hold the positions expired almost 4 years ago - will communicate the contents of the report to the Supreme Court's chamber of governance and the plenary of the Council, which will be held on September 29th, before the visit to Madrid of the EU justice commissioner, Didier Reynders.
According to a text released this Friday, Lesmes states that the technical report's conclusion that the judge who should replace him is the current vice president, Ángel Juanes, who retired in 2019. However, Juanes was substituted de facto by the Supreme Court vice president, Francisco Marín Castán, who would now have to take over the office, due to his status as the oldest of the court's presiding judges. According to the advisers, no appointment is needed and, therefore, the relief in the role does not enter into the legal contradiction that prevents the CGPJ designating substitutes while it has an expired mandate.
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The warning from Lesmes
At the opening of the judicial year, Carlos Lesmes urged the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to meet "urgently" and put in place "a definitive solution" to the "unsustainable and unacceptable situation" applying to the General Council of the Judiciary, which for almost four years has had its mandate expired. He warned that if he was ignored, "it would be necessary to reflect on the adoption of other decisions that we neither want to take nor like taking."
Deadlock on Constitutional Court's renewal
Underlying the threat is the deadlock in the renewal of the CGPJ, which is in turn at loggerheads over the choice of substitutes for two Constitutional Court judges whose mandates have also expired. In the CGPJ's negotiating committee on the matter, the conservative members put up obstacles to the designation, and in the last meeting with the progressives, they failed to bring a list of candidates, as they had previously agreed. In fact, the dissenting sector of the committee rejects that the renewal is an "urgent" issue. The posture of the eight conservative judges is opposed to that of Lesmes, who would prefer to keep to the deadlines stipulated by the recent fast-track procedural reform that returned to the Council the power to appoint the two Constitutional judges. The deadline expired on September 13th, ten days ago.