The stoppage of activity in courts and tribunals, except in services considered essential, due to the strike by Justice Administration officials brought dozens of lawyers, solicitors and social graduates to the streets this Wednesday in the Region of Murcia. Within a national call, which resulted in concentrations before judicial offices and lawyers’ associations, these professionals demanded an agreement between the employees and the Ministry of Justice “to immediately reactivate this public service and urgent measures to resolve the inadmissible already accumulated delays.
In the protests held in Murcia, Cartagena and Lorca, professionals warned that income in offices is being reduced to a minimum; causing layoffs, and affecting thousands of citizens and companies in different jurisdictions: civil, criminal, labor, commercial and contentious-administrative.
This was summed up by the dean of the Murcia Bar Association, Francisco Martínez Escribano, who read a manifesto before the City of Justice at noon. In it, his group denounced the “unsustainable situation” derived from the chain of strikes this year, carried out from January to March by the lawyers of the Administration of Justice (LAJ) and in April and May by judges and prosecutors. The demonstrators displayed banners with the slogan “Advocacy June 28. A matter of state.”
“Effective minimum services”
As they have been doing for weeks, the lawyers warned that there is no “effective compliance with the minimum services” and warned that the conflict remains “without signs of a solution.” The essential services, which are covered, have to do with matters of minors, cases with prisoners and alimony, among others.
The lawyers calculated that only in the Murcia judicial district the collapse has forced the suspension of the processing of some 20,000 cases, a “very serious” fact that affects “a public service as essential as education and health” and without which there would be no there is no «social and democratic State of Law», and consequently neither «democracy nor freedom». According to sources from the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ), in the Region there have already been 4,500 suspensions of trials, which are added to the 14,000 of the LAJ strike.
The Superior Court of Justice registers 4,500 suspensions of trials in the more than two months of unemployment; in the LAJ strike there were 14,000
«The recent and successive calls for strikes by different groups of Justice add to a historical and structural deficit that the public service has dragged on for decades. Tens of thousands of views continue to be continually suspended, in most cases without prior notice, leaving thousands of notifications unprocessed,” Martínez said. And he also referred to the blocking of the judicial consignment and deposit account since there are “indications already set for dates as unreasonable as the year 2027.”
A mediator and a State Pact
The dean of the College of Social Graduates of Murcia, Alfonso Hernández Quereda, demanded compliance with the legislation on strikes; and, specifically, the urgent appointment of a mediator or arbitrator that forces the officials and the Ministry to reach an award, that is, a binding agreement. Hernández charged harshly against the proposal of the Ministry led by Pilar Llop to postpone the negotiation until after the general elections on July 23.
And the dean of the College of Prosecutors of Murcia, María Dolores Cantó, urged planning mechanisms that allow the judicial service to be “resuscitated” from the day after the resolution of the conflict; that is, a crash plan to move forward with as many pending issues as possible and attend to new ones.
Finally, lawyers, solicitors and social graduates also demanded that, in the next legislature, a State Pact for Justice be signed, “that allows the creation of an effective and quality public service.” The act was supported by the regional deputy of the PP Miriam Guardiola. And the head of the Senate list for this party in the Region, Francisco Bernabé, showed “support and solidarity” with those affected by the strikes and called for a National Pact for Justice.
Public employees also protested in the capital to demand a “fair” salary increase and asked not to blame them for the collapse
Simultaneously, judicial officers, led by representatives of four unions (CC OO, UGT, CSIF and STAJ), gathered behind the lawyers. A few meters from them they displayed a banner with the message ‘In Justice. Remuneration and decent conditions’. Representing this group, Flora Martínez, head of the Justice sector of the Workers’ Commissions in the Region of Murcia, explained that “Justice is a matter that affects everyone” and that public employees have been on strike for “two months, expressing our discontent and looking for a solution. She specified that 1,500 officials are affected in the Community.
“The person responsible is Pedro Sánchez”
“We understand the desperation of professionals and citizens, to whom we apologize. But all we want is for the Government to sit down to negotiate and attend to our just demands. We do not have any proposal or call for a meeting and we are not going to wait indefinitely for a new government to be formed,” Martínez said. And he added that “the only person responsible for this situation is already the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.”
They reiterated the salary recognition of functions “that we are doing, despite the fact that they correspond to judges and lawyers” (LAJ). The increase would be between 350 and 430 euros gross. The unions also criticized the lack of response, after a month and a half, from the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) and the dean judge of Murcia to their request that “the suspension of trials be notified sufficiently in advance to professionals and citizens ». And they were upset with the Murcia Bar Association for a statement in which they stated that “the actions of the groups that paralyze the administration of justice do not respond to a criterion of sensitivity towards the citizen or the professionals, no matter how much they state otherwise.”
«We cannot be blamed, since we do not have the capacity to suspend trials, the judges suspend them. That they not point to us, “Martínez asked.
In Cartagena and Lorca
In Cartagena, the protest was in front of the Palace of Justice. There, the dean of the Bar Association, Ángel Méndez, denounced that “the right to effective judicial protection enshrined in our Constitution is being put at risk”; and that “citizens and professionals are the biggest losers from this succession of strikes, without anyone in charge seeming to care in the slightest.” And he recalled that the current saturation is added to that of the pandemic and that of the precovid stage.
In Lorca, fifty lawyers met in front of their collegiate headquarters. The mayor, Fulgencio Gil, who is also a lawyer, participated in this call, one of the 83 in all of Spain. He stood next to the dean, Ángel García, and other lawyers who carried banners with the slogans ‘Justice is a matter of State’, ‘Respect’ and ‘Dignity’.
For the dean of the College of Lorca, the situation of paralysis of Justice due to the successive strikes of civil servants is “completely unsustainable, legal professionals can’t take it anymore” and considered “unfortunate that nobody cares.”
He specified that as of Tuesday there are 3,000 unprocessed lawsuits in the Lorca judicial district, 1,500 of them have been filed and the procedure has not advanced and another 1,500 are pending. But regardless of the lawsuits, there are tens of thousands of court proceedings that have been suspended, at the rate of a hundred a day.
García said that the legal profession is saying enough is enough, as are officials from the Administration of Justice and other legal professionals. “We understand that it cannot be that an administration as important as Justice has been completely paralyzed for six months,” she said.
According to García, the economic consequences of the stoppage are incalculable, there are individuals and companies that are waiting for judicial decisions “that can be very important in the economic and family life of many people” and he regretted that the Ministry of Justice is not “giving an answer”. before this crisis.
He recognized that for professionals in Lorca “it is being terrible”, many are having difficulties to meet such basic expenses as electricity bills, water or office rents. “We have been six months and in some offices the billing has fallen by 90%,” he said.
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