On the left, Francisco Marín Castán, President of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court, in July 2021. JUAN MANUEL SERRANO ARCE -UIMP (JUAN MANUEL SERRANO ARCE -UIMP)
The same day that Carlos Lesmes surprised the opening of the judicial year with his threat of resignation, eyes turned to Francisco Marín Castán, president of Chamber I (Civil) of the Supreme Court since 2014 and interim vice president of the high court since 2019. This last position led him to replace Lesmes as head of the Supreme Court if his resignation was consummated, although some magistrates and members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) expressed doubts that day that he would also have to assume the presidency of the body of government of the judges.
A report commissioned by Lesmes himself from the Council's technical office has resolved the dilemma and Marín Castán will preside over both bodies if the president resigns.
Marín Castán, 69 years old (turns 70 in November), will be the replacement for Lesmes by seniority: when the previous vice president of the high court, Ángel Juanes, resigned in 2019, the CGPJ was already in office (since December 2018) and the law prevents its members from electing a new president or vice president.
Until then, this was one of the few powers that the Council had vetoed by law when the mandate was extended.
Given the impossibility of choosing a substitute, the technicians determined that he had to assume the position on an interim basis, the oldest of the five presidents of the high court room, and the assignment fell to Marín Castán.
The interim has now lasted three years and the blockade in the renewal of the CGPJ will now lead him to take charge not only of the presidency of the Supreme Court,
Marín Castán, born in Segovia in 1952 and with a reputation as a serious judge but with a friendly character, entered the judicial career in 1977 with number one in his promotion.
His first assignments were in La Roda (Albacete) and San Roque (Cádiz), and he has been a magistrate in the provincial courts of Huelva and Madrid.
He first came to the Supreme Court as a magistrate of the technical cabinet and in 2000 he was appointed magistrate of the high court.
Since 2020 he has shared a destiny with his brother Fernando, magistrate of Chamber V (Military).
The president of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ is usually elected by the full Council, but Marín Castán will not have to submit to the consensus of the members nor does his promotion require any agreement from them, since the report commissioned by Lesmes establishes that he assumes the presidency “automatically”.
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.
This also eliminates the possibility that Lesmes' position could remain vacant indefinitely due to the lack of agreement between the members to choose a substitute,
The possibility of Marín Castán becoming the new president has been unevenly received by the members of the Council.
The hard core of the conservative bloc does not like it, which reproaches Lesmes for his decision to resign because they consider that he leaves the CGPJ adrift.
The profile of his possible replacement, a member of the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association —of a moderate conservative tendency— is not the one that this group of members likes the most, among whom there is an abundance of a tougher profile and closer to the Professional Association of the Magistracy (APM).
In fact, 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,
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