After almost two decades at the head of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León, José Luis Concepción announced his retirement from his time at the autonomous high court in September. He did so despite the fact that he had been in office on an interim basis since September 2021, three extra years in office due to the blockade that has lasted for years in the General Council of the Judiciary, resolved last June. Now, the Official State Gazette has published this Tuesday the announcement of the call for the position “due to the expiration of the mandate of the previously appointed.”
With the publication of the announcement in the BOE, applicants have 20 calendar days to submit their application. Among the requirements, in addition to a merit contest, those people belonging to the Judicial Career with the category of magistrate in an administrative situation of active service or special services who, on the date of publication of the call, will be taken into account. They have provided ten years of service in the category and have been part of the Judicial Career for at least fifteen years.
The last years of José Luis Concepción at the head of the TSJCyL will be remembered for the numerous controversies he generated due to his statements, with frequent attacks on the Government and the left in particular. In his last intervention, on September 20, 2024, at the opening ceremony of the Judicial Year, he assured that “judges are instigated by the public powers, who do nothing other than apply the Law promulgated by Parliament, with defamations, and even through the exercise of criminal actions that are known in advance that cannot succeed, with the sole objective of distracting attention from facts that may deserve normative reproach. Also, with a clear purpose of delegitimization in anticipation of an unfavorable resolution.”
With these words, Concepción added one more attack to the progressive Government. The still president of the TSJCyL has a long history of political activism, as the member of the Permanent Commission of the General Council of the Judiciary Concepción Sáez reproached him for demanding disciplinary measures by comparing the Nazis with the Communist Party in 2022 in an interview in the Burgos newspaper. His “uninhibited interventions in public debates make him an activist at the service of ideological distinctives,” said the member. From that and many statements, the CGPJ preferred to file the complaints, considering them “personal opinions about a certain political party.” The Promoter of Disciplinary Action pointed out that Concepción did not incur any infraction included in the Law because he was protected by freedom of expression and that he did not use his position to incur “serious and objective disregard for citizens” when he referred to the Communist Party. from Spain.
This is not the only criticism of the PCE to his credit, the magistrate assured in an interview that “The democracy of a country is put into question since the Communist Party is part of the Government”in reference to the fact that the PCE is part of IU, a member of Unidas Podemos, a partner of the Government since 2019. He made this statement after being asked if it was appropriate for the vice president of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, to “put into question” the democratic quality from Spain.
The magistrate was also critical in 2019 of the exhumation of the dictator Francisco Franco. For Concepción, the act “changes or transmutes into resentment the concord that has existed in this country since 1978” and that is the consequence of the “perverse” law of historical memory. In an interview in The North of Castilethe judge indicated that this norm, approved in 2007, “regenerates hatred” among Spaniards and tries to “rewrite history.” Concepción defined the exhumation as a feeling of “sadness.”
The highest representative of the Judiciary in Castilla y León also charged in May 2020 in an interview in Zero Wave against the state of alarm decreed by the Government due to the pandemic situation. Concepción assured that “the state of alarm allows us to limit rights but not suspend them, and we Spaniards have some fundamental rights suspended.”
Furthermore, the magistrate delved, from a legal point of view, that “the state of alarm is being used for something more than what the law of 81 allows, which is to occasionally restrict some right with the exclusive purpose of stopping an epidemic, not to legislate outside the walls of the need caused by the epidemic.” Also during the pandemic, Concepción accused the executive of “hiding” the death toll.
This occasion was not the only one to charge against the Government. Concepción has been against the Amnesty Law as he expressed at the opening of the Judicial Year of 2023. The president of the TSJCyL indicated that granting an amnesty to the “seditious” will be “blessing conduct carried out with the purpose of destroying Spain, attacking the Constitution and admit that the criminal response that was given with the law in hand was unjust.”
Concepción Sáez, member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) at the proposal of Izquierda Unida, sent to the then president of the Judiciary, Carlos Lesmes, “governmental and disciplinary measures” against the president of the Superior Court of Justice in Castilla y León, José Luis Concepción, which were not taken into account.
Beyond the controversial statements, there has also been criticism of his way of managing the courts. In March 2023, the chief judge of Court No. 4 of Ávila, Tomás Sánchez Puente, accused the president of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León of suggesting that he take medical leave to carry out sentences.
In a thread on Twitter, Sánchez Puente has assured that after informing him of the problem of overload in his court, Concepción told him: “And why don’t you ask for a medical leave, and take advantage of it to obtain sentences?” Regarding possible repercussions, Sánchez Puente has stated that since the conversation took place by telephone, “the president of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León has the possibility of filing a complaint against me for defamation, with the probability of winning it.” He and I know that it was like that,” he said.
The only ‘slap on the wrist’ to José Luis Concepción was in May 2020, following his criticism of the State of Alarm. The then president of the CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, sent him a letter to demand “moderation, prudence and restraint.”
Concepción not only presides over the TSJ, but also the courtroom, where politicians with immunity go to the commission of any crime. As published by elDiario.es, Concepción has benefited these years from an official car given to him by the Junta de Castilla y León, an unusual concession that occurred due to the magistrate’s discomfort with the cars that the Ministry of Justice provides to the presidents of superior courts and who were not to his taste.
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