Congress must appoint a new member of the Judicial Power despite the fact that the mandate has expired

Rafael Fernández Valverde, fourth from the left, together with Carlos Lesmes in a plenary session of the General Council of the Judiciary.ANDREA COMAS

The imminent retirement of the member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) Rafael Fernández Valverde is going to force Congress to launch the mechanism to replace the members of the governing body of the judges, despite the fact that it has been in existence for more than three years with expired mandate.

Council sources point out that once Fernández Valverde's retirement, scheduled for next March 5, is completed, the body will go to the Lower House to name his substitute, who must come out of the list of three substitutes for the shift of vocal judges voted by Congress in 2013 when electing the members of the body.

A legal reform approved in 2013 established that the Congress and the Senate, when voting for the 10 members corresponding to each Chamber, should also elect six alternates each, to prevent, as had happened in previous mandates, the departure of a vocal would leave gaps that could reduce the functioning of the Council.

This mechanism has already been activated twice in the current mandate: after the departure of the member Mercè Pigem, who resigned after trying to enter Spain from Andorra with 9,500 euros in cash;

and Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who left office to be Minister of the Interior.

But it is the first time that the Council has been forced to fill a post with an expired mandate (it had to have been renewed in December 2018).

It is also the first time that a retiring member has to be replaced,

The three alternate judges elected by Congress were, in this order, Judges José Carlos Orga, who works in Logroño;

Pedro Castellano Rausell, from the Provincial Court of Valencia;

and Luz García Paredes, magistrate of the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court.

Congress must now contact the first of them to inform him of his entry into the Council, although the sources consulted warn that Orga is among the candidates proposed in 2018 by the PP to be part of the new CGPJ, so they believe it is likely that he will resign now access the body with the expired mandate, since it could not repeat in the next one.

In that case, the Chamber must contact the second substitute and if he also resigns, with the third.

Fernández Valverde, magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court who was elected a member at the proposal of the PP, attended his last plenary session as a member on Thursday.

His companions said goodbye to him singing

and he pronounced a few words of farewell that one of the attendees defines as "heartfelt and serious".

The magistrate, according to these sources, lamented the lack of agreement between the political forces to renew the body and expressed his "concern" about some recent events that have widened the distance between the Judiciary and the Executive.

Among them, Fernández Valverde cited the draft law on Digital Efficiency, which, according to a report approved this Thursday by the Council, "dilutes" the powers of the governing body of judges.