The president of Chamber I (Civil) of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, will replace Carlos Lesmes as head of the presidency of the high court and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) if he finally chooses to resign, as he himself announced What would it do if the governing body of the judges is not renewed in the short term due to the blockade of the PP?
Lesmes himself has commissioned a report from the Council's technical office on who should relieve him and the text concludes that it should be Marín Castán, who is currently Vice President of the Supreme Court because the person who previously held this position, Ángel de Juanes, retired three years ago and, as the CGPJ is in office, it has not been possible to be replaced.
The report commissioned by Lesmes makes it clear that the president of the Council is formally preparing his resignation for the coming weeks, a possibility that members of the conservative group, to which he belongs, doubted after his announcement.
Before materializing the resignation, however, Lesmes wants to resolve the replacement of the two members of the Constitutional Court that corresponds to appoint the CGPJ, and that by law should have been elected before September 13.
The blockade imposed by part of the conservative sector of the Council has prevented this renewal so far.
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Lesmes plans to gather the necessary consensus to renew the Constitutional Court with the progressives and part of the conservative sector before October
Lesmes holds the presidency of both the Supreme Court and the Council and there were doubts in both bodies about whether a single person should assume both positions in the event that the president resigns or if they should be divided, so that the head of the high court would be assumed by his vice president. , Marín Castán, and that of the CGPJ, the oldest member, currently the progressive Rafael Mozo.
Finally, it was decided to ask the technical cabinet, which has concluded that the Constitution and the Organic Law of the Judiciary conceive both presidencies as "a joint and inseparable ownership", which excludes the possibility of separating them.
Discarded the option of appointing two substitutes, the presidency of both bodies must fall, according to the technicians, to the vice president of the Supreme Court.
The report, whose conclusions the Council itself has advanced this Friday, is an example in itself of the diabolical situation that the CGPJ and the Supreme are experiencing due to the blockade of the renewal of the governing body of the judges, whose mandate has been extended since December of 2018. A legal reform of 2013 established the figure of vice president of the Supreme Court, which did not exist, and Ángel Juanes, until then president of the National Court, premiered the position to be
number two
of Lesmes.
Juanes retired in 2019, but could not be replaced because the law prohibits the acting Council from appointing a new president or vice president;
for this reason, the technicians established that the position be assumed by the oldest president of the Supreme Court, in this case, the head of the Civil Chamber.
Marín Castán is not a member of the CGPJ, but the report commissioned by Lesmes establishes that he must also assume the presidency of this body and do so "automatically", without the need for an agreement by the Council.
This conclusion makes it possible to circumvent the veto on making discretionary appointments that the current Council has had since a legal reform promoted by the Government in 2021 prohibited this type of appointment while the CGPJ's mandate had expired, as is the case now.
Lesmes, as announced this Friday by the CGPJ, will give an account of the text to the members of the Governing Chamber of the high court in the session that this body will hold next Monday, and to the members of the CGPJ during the ordinary plenary session set for Thursday 29 .
The president of the Civil Chamber is one of the conservative magistrates of the Supreme Court who have admitted their interest in making the leap to the Constitutional Court, but the conservative bloc of the Council, which claims to have no candidates because no magistrate has been offered to them, does not consider it to be a suitable applicant.
Marín Castán is considered a moderate conservative, a member of the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association, and among the members proposed by the PP, a much tougher profile predominates and is related to the conservative Professional Association of the Magistrature (APM).
Lesmes has not set a date for his possible resignation, but his environment considers that, if he does not see real options for an immediate renewal of the Council, he will resign in October.
Before, he wants to leave the appointment of two Constitutional magistrates closed, a process that should have been completed before September 13, but that is taking longer due to the obstacles imposed by a majority sector of the conservative bloc of the governing body of the judges .
After a meeting held on Wednesday to try to advance the appointment, the members proposed by the PP announced that they would hold an internal meeting on the 28th and that they ruled out meeting again with the progressives before that date, which prevented any prior possibility of an agreement. .
A day later, on September 29, an ordinary plenary session of the CGPJ was convened, and Lesmes,
Lesmes has proposed his resignation as a measure of pressure on the parties to try to force the renewal of the body, although his resignation is the only one that does not reduce the total number of members of the plenary because, with the body in office, it is the only one that is substituted.
Of the 20 members of the plenary session, the body now only has 18 due to the retirement, last March, of Rafael Fernández Valverde, and the death, in July, of Victoria Cinto.
The announced resignation of the president does not seem, according to the sources consulted, that it will translate into a collective resignation or a chain of members.
Lesmes himself opposed this possibility in his opening speech of the judicial year, in which he stated that a collective resignation would be "irresponsible and unacceptable" because it would imply the total paralysis of the Council.