The new General Council of the Judiciary agreed between the PSOE and the PP, which took office and was sworn in before the King on Thursday, then proposed in its first meeting seven magistrates of the Supreme Court as candidates to preside over the governing body of the judges. Pilar Teso, Pablo Lucas, Carmen Lamela, Ángeles Huet, Ana Ferrer, Antonio del Moral and Esperanza Córdoba are the candidates to preside over the body in a decision that will be voted on next Tuesday, in the first meeting held after the agreement between the two main parties, reached just one month ago and after more than 2,000 days of blockage.
The new Council now has between three and seven days to elect its president by a three-fifths majority (at least 13 of the 20 members) and that figure must necessarily come from among the active magistrates of the Supreme Court. The need to achieve reinforced majorities requires an agreement between the two sectors, the one driven by progressive sensibilities and the conservative one. The two major parties that signed the pact on June 25, PSOE and PP, have denied any initial agreement on the name of the future president of the Judiciary and the Supreme Court and have left that decision in the hands of the 20 new members.
Sources from the new Council insist that everything is yet to be decided on Tuesday. In this first selection of candidates, the 10 progressive members agreed on three names (Pilar Teso, Ana Ferrer and Ángeles Huet) and among the conservatives the remaining four (Pablo Lucas, Carmen Lamela, Antonio del Moral and Esperanza Córdoba) were the majority. The law establishes that the candidate must be a member of the judicial career with the rank of magistrate of the Supreme Court who meets the conditions required to be president of the Chamber or be a jurist of recognised competence with more than 25 years of experience in his profession.
The Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, who participated with the King and the President of the Government in the session of constitution of the new Council, later in the Ministry stressed the importance of the day, “for Justice and for the country, for what it means in terms of normalisation in the functioning of the three powers of the Rule of Law: the executive, the legislative and the judicial. Bolaños took the opportunity to emphasise that in the recent report on the Rule of Law of the European Commission on Spain, the path taken in this agreement to renew the Council was welcomed, which had been extended for five and a half years due to the veto of the PP in order not to lose influence in this body. The minister did allow himself to advise the 20 renewed members to start as soon as possible “talking and dialoguing about an agreement on the figure of its president, as mandated by law”.
Among the seven proposed candidates, there are four progressive judges (three women and one man) and three more conservative ones (two women and one man). One of the candidates who is most talked about in PP and Government circles for the position of president of the Council of the Judiciary, which will therefore combine the presidency of the Supreme Court, is Pilar Teso, who already competed for that position in 2013, promoted by the progressive sector against the conservative candidate who was later elected, Carlos Lesmes, and lost by 16 votes to four. In the end, Lesmes resigned and left office in 2022, tired of demanding and demanding that the PP and PSOE address the expired renewal of the Council, which should have been resolved in 2018.
Pilar Teso joined the judiciary in 1985 and has been a specialist in administrative litigation since 1989. During her career she held positions in the courts of Parla (Madrid), Barcelona, Collado-Villalba (Madrid) and Madrid. After being promoted to the rank of judge, she worked in the Social Court No. 2 of Cáceres (1988-1989), in the Contentious-Administrative Division of the High Court of Justice of Madrid (1989-1997), in the Technical Office of the Supreme Court (1997-2000) and in the Contentious-Administrative Division of the National Court (2000-2008) before her appointment as a judge of the high court.
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Another option for that responsibility could be Carmen Lamela, a magistrate of the Second Chamber, who entered the judicial career, by opposition, in 1986. During Lamela’s time at the National Court, she was able to participate in the case on the independence process, she was the one who ordered the imprisonment of Oriol Junqueras and the arrest of the separatist leaders who did not flee Spain in 2017.
The 20 new members of the Council met after swearing their oaths of office at La Zarzuela before the King and the other powers of the State.
The candidates
Pilar Teso
Pilar Teso (1960), a specialist judge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court since 2008, joined the judiciary in 1985 and has been a specialist in administrative litigation since 1989. During her career she held positions in the courts of Parla (Madrid), Barcelona, Collado-Villalba (Madrid) and Madrid. After being promoted to the rank of judge, she worked in Social Court Number 2 of Cáceres (1988-1989), in the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Justice of Madrid (1989-1997), in the Technical Office of the Supreme Court (1997-2000) and in the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court (2000-2008) before her appointment as a judge of the high court.
Carmen Lamela
She also led the investigation into terrorist crimes of the Civil Guards and their partners who were attacked in a bar in the Navarrese town of Alsasua and was in the court, with Ana Ferrer, another of the Supreme Court judges now a candidate to preside over the Council, which reviewed the appeals lodged by the former presidents of the Andalusian Government, José Antonio Griñán and Manuel Chaves, against the sentence in the ERE case imposed by the Court of Seville which has now been reviewed and corrected by the Constitutional Court. Lamela rejected these appeals and Ferrer was the one who issued a dissenting vote against the position of the majority that had confirmed the sentences.
Ana Maria Ferrer
Both Ferrer (progressive) and Del Moral (conservative) were part of the court of the ‘procés’. Ferrer disagreed with his other five fellow judges by signing a dissenting vote in which he concluded that the crime of embezzlement should not be excluded from the amnesty, so in theory it should also benefit Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa.
Paul Luke
Pablo Lucas is also a judge in the contentious chamber of the Supreme Court and since 2009 has been responsible for assuming judicial control of the National Intelligence Centre (CNI). In November 2023, he made a name for himself by annulling the appointment of former minister Magdalena Valerio as president of the Council of State, on the grounds that she did not meet the professional requirements for that position, which was later occupied by former minister Carmen Calvo. Lucas was considered close to the progressive sector but has now been proposed by the conservatives. In 2019, he participated, together with Pilar Teso, in the court that endorsed the exhumation of the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco from the Cuelgamuros valley.
Antonio del Moral
Born in 1959, he has been a Supreme Court judge since April 2012, and was one of the members of the court that judged the ‘procés’. He has a PhD in Law from the Complutense University of Madrid and has been a public prosecutor by competitive examination since 1983. He served in these roles in the Technical Office of the Attorney General’s Office and in the Supreme Court. He was a professor at the Instituto de Empresa between 1985 and 2012 and of Procedural Law at the Complutense University of Madrid.
Hope Cordoba
A judge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court since February 2020 and a graduate in Law from the Autonomous University of Madrid, she entered the judiciary by competitive examination in 1985. In 2014 she was appointed head of the Inspection Service of the General Council of the Judiciary, a position she held until her appointment as a judge of the high court. She has been proposed by the conservatives.
Angels Huet
Judge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court since February 2020. She joined the judiciary in 1983. In a special service situation, she was appointed advisor responsible for the Justice Department of the Ombudsman (1984-1995), lawyer of the Constitutional Court (1995-1996) and member of the CGPJ (1996-2001). She was proposed by the progressives.
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