Once the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) has been renewed under a progressive Government, the key positions in the National Court will continue to be occupied by conservative judges, the overwhelming majority trend in the judicial career. Five of the candidates to preside over the specialized court were positions in administrations governed by the Popular Party or members of the CGPJ at the proposal of the conservative party.
The candidacy that has received the most media attention has been that of Enrique López, for recently continuing his position as Minister of Justice in the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, from which he left in a traumatic way after trying to distribute his political affections between the president and the previous one. president of the PP, Pablo Casado, faced and defeated by the Madrid president.
López is the judge to whom the PP has paid the most attention, regardless of which leaders the party had. The conservatives insisted for 15 years until they managed to get him to become a magistrate of the Constitutional Court. His departure from the guarantee body was not peaceful either: he resigned after being caught drunk and without a helmet at the controls of his motorcycle.
With a place in the National Court, López would access the position of president of the court from its highest instance, the Appeals Chamber, created in 2017 after years of recommendations from Europe in that regard. Its establishment at that time was surrounded by controversy: it would mean a promotion for Eloy Velasco at the time when the judge was investigating two of the most serious corruption cases that have affected the PP, Lezo and Púnica. To replace him, the holder of the position, Manuel García Castellón, would return from a golden destiny in Rome.
Precisely Eloy Velasco, former general director of Justice in the Valencian Community, is another of the candidates to preside over the National Court. Velasco aspires to the position with the still recent echo of some statements in which Irene Montero was disgraced for having been a supermarket cashier as a condition for exercising her position as Minister of Equality.
With an openly conservative past, bordering on reactionary, Judge Juan Pablo González-Herrero appears as a candidate to preside over the National Court. He shares with Enrique López that he has been a member of the CGPJ with the support of the Popular Party. Both were also removed from a court that was going to judge the conservative party for not guaranteeing the absence of impartiality. Juan Pablo González defended the CGPJ that judges could refuse to marry homosexual couples.
Another of the candidates to preside over the National Court who has left an imprint of his religious convictions is Francisco Manuel Oliver. The judge of the specialized court issued a dissenting opinion that, contrary to the majority position of the court, advocated condemning an artist who painted Franco’s tomb. Oliver held various positions in the PP governments in Madrid, with Ignacio González and Esperanza Aguirre in the Presidency. The most relevant of them was that of general director of Security in February 2013, a position that he abandoned in January 2015.
Among the aspiring judges with links to the PP, María Tardón completes the list, now in the Central Court of Instruction number 3 of the National Court and former councilor of the conservative formation in Madrid during the mandate of José María Álvarez del Manzano in the Consistory. Voices from the conservative sector refuse, despite his past, to place Tardón in the block of conservative judges who aspire to preside over the National Court, so they could “sell” his candidacy as alien to their tendency.
A progressive woman
In the Appeals Chamber the picture is not very different. The candidates to preside over the National Court Enrique López, Eloy Velasco and Fernández Oliver also repeat as candidates. The first two are already part of this instance. The current acting president of the Criminal Chamber, the veteran Alfonso Guevara, a conservative magistrate who does not miss the opportunity, however, to be unpredictable in his decisions, Ramón Gallo and José Eduardo Gutiérrez Gómez, join as candidates.
Completing the list of candidates to preside over the Appeals Chamber is a woman, probably the one who has the best chance of presiding over this second instance of the National Court, Manuela Fernández Prado, with a progressive tendency.
The election for the presidency of the Criminal Chamber opens the opportunity for two progressives, Fernando Andreu, who must face Guevara repeating, already with the position in possession, and the former PP officials Enrique López and Fernández Oliver.
The General Council of the Judiciary must also elect president of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, in charge of resolving appeals against Government decisions, and to which the conservatives José Guerrero Zaplana and Fernando Luis Ruiz Piñeiro are running. For the Social room there is only one candidate, the also conservative Ramón Gallo.
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