The Judiciary suspends the plenary session due to the death of the member Victoria Cinto

María Victoria Cinto, in her official office at the Government headquarters in Vitoria when she was Deputy Minister of Justice. PRADIP J. PHANSE

The member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) Victoria Cinto, 63, has died this Thursday in San Sebastián.

Cinto, elected a member of the Council in 2013 at the proposal of the PSOE, was a magistrate of the Provincial Court of Gipuzkoa, which she presided over between 1999 and 2010, and she had been ill for months, but her condition recently worsened and she was currently on sick leave.

After learning of his death, the president of the CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, has decided to suspend the plenary session that was being held this morning and in which the body planned to discuss its response to the legal reform announced by the Government to promote the renewal of the Constitutional Court .

Cinto was one of the nine members of the progressive sector of the Council, a body whose mandate has expired since December 2018 due to the resistance of the PP to agree on its renewal.

After his death, the CGPJ is left with 18 councilors plus President Lesmes, after Rafael Fernández Valverde, proposed by the PP, retired last March.

The CGPJ asked to replace him so as not to be left with one less member, but Congress rejected this option after requesting a report from the Chamber's lawyers, who advised against replacing Fernández Valverde on the understanding that, because the Council's mandate expired more than three years, the article of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) that regulates the substitution of members is not applicable.

Now, the vacant position of Fernández Valverde is joined by that of Victoria Cinto.

The death of Cinto, who was Dean of the Courts of San Sebastián and Deputy Minister of Justice of the Basque Government between October 2010 and December 2012, occurs on the day that the Council was going to decide how far to take its pulse with the Government for the express legal reform proposal with which the Executive of Pedro Sánchez intends to replace the four magistrates of the Constitutional Court whose mandate expired on June 12 (which would foreseeably give rise to a majority of magistrates from the progressive sector).

This legal reform consists of giving back to the CGPJ ―even when it is in office― the capacity to elect the two members that correspond to it in the court of guarantees, maintaining, however, the prohibition of making appointments in the rest of the courts.

The members were going to have on the table the proposal of nine conservative councilors, who demand that the body show its rejection of the initiative proposed by the PSOE, considering, among other things, that it does not make sense to only unlock the ability to make appointments in the Constitutional and not, for example, in some rooms of the Supreme whose situation is close to collapse.

But the brief that these nine magistrates presented needs two more votes to guarantee its approval and, with the wording that they presented on Monday, they were not going to get them.

Lesmes himself and the vocal promoters of that initiative had held conversations in the last few hours with other members of the body to agree on a "more unifying" text, in the words of one of the councilors.

Today's session, however, has been postponed to a date not yet determined.

The plenary has approved a condolence statement in which he recalls the work carried out by Cinto as a member of the body, "characterized by his professional competence, his spirit of conciliation and the permanent search for consensus".

"The professional integrity and deep humanity that Victoria displayed made it a great honor to meet her and share with her the responsibilities of the position," says the letter, in which her colleagues highlight that her contribution to the current mandate of the Council has result "of capital importance" and "has been decisive in the development of the powers" of the body, where he was a member of the disciplinary commission.