The first meeting of the progressive and conservative delegations of the General Council of the Judiciary had as an outstanding note on Friday the fact that the first was able to provide up to nine names of candidates to occupy a place in the Constitutional Court, while the second did not present a candidate some, supposedly for not having found it.
The progressives stated that in their proposal they had included a conservative magistrate, Rafael Fernández Valverde, recently retired from the Supreme Court's Litigation Chamber, to try to facilitate the work of their interlocutors with this suggestion, who argue hitherto insurmountable difficulties in the search for candidates from the judicial right.
Domain of the Contentious Chamber.
The list provided by the progressive delegation on those interested in accessing the Constitutional Court includes six Supreme Court judges —Ángeles Huet, José Manuel Bandrés, Eduardo Espín, Pablo Lucas, Isabel Perelló and the aforementioned Fernández Valverde—, along with two members of the Social or Labor Chamber, also of the Supreme Court –the president of the Chamber itself, María Luisa Segoviano, and Judge Rosa Virolés—, and finally the president of the Military Chamber, Jacobo Borja de Quiroga.
The Supreme is the origin.
They all belong to the judicial career, except Espín and Lucas, who accessed it from their respective chairs of Constitutional Law.
Now, for the purposes of their candidacy for the Constitutional Court, the nine are now magistrates of the Supreme Court, regardless of their origin.
What was agreed in principle by both sectors of the Council is that the two magistrates who are now elected to the Constitutional Court come from the Supreme Court.
Two exliterates of the Constitutional.
In addition to Eduardo Espín and Pablo Lucas —due to their status as professors of Constitutional Law— in the list provided on Friday by the progressive sector there are two magistrates who have had a special relationship with the court of guarantees.
These are Isabel Perelló and Ángeles Huet.
The first was a lawyer for the Constitutional between 1993 and 2003, and the second between 1995 and 1996.
The rapporteur on the pardons of the 'procés'.
Ángeles Huet, on the other hand, was the rapporteur for the Supreme Court resolution that initially rejected the resources of the PP, Vox and three Cs deputies against the pardons of the
procés leaders.
Huet's thesis was that the appellants were not entitled to exercise said challenge.
Last May, a change in the composition of the Chamber meant that the Supreme Court rectified its criteria and admitted the appeals for processing, arguing that the decision on the existence or not of legitimacy of said parties would be resolved in the sentence of the case.
The judge who controls the CNI.
Pablo Lucas, in turn, was chief of staff of the former president of the Judicial Power Council Javier Delgado, who headed the governing body of the judges between 1996 and 2001, and is currently the Supreme Court magistrate in charge of authorizing the National Center of Intelligence (CNI) the authorizations for eavesdropping and interception of communications.
His orders, therefore, were the ones that authorized such wiretaps in the case of 18 pro-independence leaders after the
procés sentence.
The conservative who annulled the kamikaze pardon.
In the case of Fernández Valverde - who has not hidden at any time his desire to access the Constitutional Court once he retired as a magistrate - it was not difficult to handle his name, because apart from his belonging to the Supreme Court, he has been a member of the Judicial Power Council for two training.
The first, during the stage of José María Aznar (PP) as president, and the second during the last eight years, as a member of the Council whose mandate has expired since 2018, after having agreed in the period of Mariano Rajoy (PP) to the front of the government.
Fernández Valverde was the author of the sentence that annulled the pardon of a kamikaze that caused the death of a young man, after driving five kilometers in the opposite direction.
The sentence was based on the “unreasonableness” of said measure of grace.
A resume of 115 pages and another of two pages.
The progressive sector has not fully explained how this possible candidacy has gone unnoticed by his colleagues in the conservative bloc, given the notoriety and prestige of Fernández Valverde.
In fact, the curriculum that this magistrate has provided to support his interest in said position is the most extensive of those that have come into the hands of the proponents.
The exposition of the trajectory of this magistrate consists of 115 pages, while that of Pablo Lucas —a member of the same Contentious Chamber— has 71, and those of Isabel Perelló and Eduardo Espín, extraordinarily synthetic, occupy only two pages.
Give up the right of veto.
The delegation from the progressive bloc explained to its interlocutors on Friday that it was renouncing from the outset a practice that has been relatively common in negotiations for the renewal of constitutional bodies.
This is the right to veto the candidates proposed by the other party.
The progressives take it for granted that any candidate that the conservatives finally decide to propose will meet the requirements of prestige and suitability for the position that is required to access the Constitutional Court, since what was agreed upon as a starting point is that the future members of the court of guarantees that are now elected must be magistrates of the Supreme Court.
For this very reason,
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