The game comes to an end.
After weeks of tense campaign, nearly 76,000 lawyers attached to the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) have the opportunity this Tuesday to elect their highest representative for the next five years.
Seven applicants are running for dean.
Whoever wins will lead an organization with more than 425 years of history;
huge institutional relationships;
an annual budget of more than 30 million euros;
with more than 200 direct workers;
and that it receives four million in grants for the management of free justice.
Much power and influence is at stake.
Also, how to use them.
More information
From Chinarro's 2,000 euros to Ospina's 27,000: the spending of the candidates to direct the ICAM
"Here people come to serve and not to serve themselves," says the current dean, José María Alonso Puig, sitting in his office at the ICAM headquarters, located in an old aristocratic mansion converted into a bank in 1977 —it still has the cameras armored- and where the professional institution arrived in 1986 after acquiring the building, in the privileged Serrano street of the capital, in the heart of the Salamanca district.
“Being here is an honor.
Whoever comes to use this for personal gain is cheating the professionals.
This position is not for that”, emphasizes the lawyer, specialized in civil litigation and with more than four decades of career behind him.
Alonso came to the position in 2017 after heading two of the most prestigious law firms in the country (Baker McKenzie and Garrigues) and now, five years later, he looks back with relative satisfaction: "The pandemic was the great challenge we have faced in This weather.
We had to allocate a million euros to collaborate with the recovery of the most affected professionals [who saw their income substantially reduced]”, he points out, aware of the criticism he receives from several of the candidates to replace him: “It is very easy to always say that It's the dean's fault."
Alonso's name already joins a century-old list of deans, which includes prominent figures in the history of Spain, which demonstrates his enormous social relevance.
ICAM was led by, among many others, José Canalejas, head of the Government at the beginning of the 20th century and shot dead in an attack in 1912;
Manuel García Prieto, who replaced him as head of the council of ministers after his death;
or the also minister Juan de la Cierva.
They now want to join Eugenio Ribón, Raúl Ochoa, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, Ángeles Chinarro, Miguel Durán, Beatriz Saura and Begoña Trigo —and also Raisy C. Ventura, who has presented her individual candidacy and not a list like the other seven— .
The first three have served on Alonso's board for the past five years.
But, beyond the legal community, why should a non-lawyer care about these elections?
These 76,000 lawyers are the ones who represent citizens in their divorces, defend them when they are swindled, assist them in judicial declarations... In short, they are necessary for the people of Madrid in the vast majority of contacts with the law.
In addition, the body has great influence, although some candidates denounce that it is not exerted enough in favor of professionals.
“The dean of 76,000 lawyers has enormous representation.
You get the institutions to listen to you, but that doesn't mean you get everything you want," defends Alonso.
With so much power at stake, the electoral campaign has heated up at times, with candidates hurling accusations at each other of having surreptitious intentions.
On the last occasion that the lawyers went to the polls, the acting dean, Sonia Gumpert, denounced having suffered an attack at the hotel where the vote count is carried out.
This past Thursday, one of the applicants, Raúl Ochoa, left the debate for seven organized by ICAM: “I left because not everything goes.
We have a campaign where the rest of the candidacies have broken the statutory regulations, they have tried to dirty it by removing dirty laundry.
This is not a political campaign, but that of a professional association.
They have shown an anxiety to reach Serrano, 9 [headquarters of the College], which I do not share”.
Sonia Gumpert, then acting dean, after denouncing an attack in the 2017 elections.Claudio Alvarez
The position of dean of the bar association is highly coveted, despite the fact that, according to the statutes, it is not paid.
Candidate Juan Gonzalo Ospina sums it up like this: “It is a position that opens the door to justice, gives you access to have contact with the legislative and executive power, the ability to control an institution that reaches 76,000 legal professionals and the intentions that lead to wanting to opt for all this are not always noble.
The candidate Ángela Chinarro, who is competing with the support of the progressive Free Association of Lawyers and Lawyers (ALA), goes further: “The college is a great beach bar for people who know how to obtain a good income from the position.
You leave office with an impressive contact list, it can even be a political springboard for certain people”.
The lack of transparency of the institution has been on the lips of all the candidates, including some of those who belonged to the outgoing government board.
Chinarro gives as an example one of the institution's best-known controversies, that of the contract with the journalist Alfonso Merlos, who was fired in 2020 after a television scandal related to his private life.
“We had been asking for that contract since 2018, and it was only made public when all that broke out,” says Chinarro.
According to data from ALA, the journalist received more than 120,000 per year through his company for ICAM communication tasks, in addition to another 30,000 euros in variables —the cost for the institution rose to 180,000 when adding VAT— .
There are more examples in the opinion of the candidate Saura, who highlights a game of one million euros under the heading of "others": "We are talking about one million euros, I am not saying that they detail up to four coffees in the budgets, but one million I It seems that it is necessary to justify it more”.
"They are not interested in fighting"
Begoña Trigo reproaches the current board that the college "has not been in defense of the interests of small and medium-sized firms."
“They were not interested in battling with the Administration”, affirms the candidate, who adds: “ICAM is a very important civil institution, with a great capacity for convocation.
But the interests have gone the other way.
Having institutional relations is always a point for the development of your company”.
“The school has a flat encephalogram from the point of view of political, social and institutional influence because the deans, instead of putting their finger on the sore in front of the public powers, calm down to the condition of comfortable beings who don't even know they don't feel, they're not noticed, they don't go through,” complains Miguel Durán.
”You have to have leadership capacity to investigate, for example, which courts are slow and why and look for solutions, we have not had the capacity to influence the opinions on laws, we have not raised our voices against the fact that in Spain there are four or five computer programs in the justice system instead of a single one…”, lists Ospina.
Low involvement
Turnout is always disappointing.
In the last elections it stayed at 8%.
Probably, the voting system is one of the causes of this very low percentage, several applicants agree.
You cannot participate electronically, the period for voting by mail ended at the beginning of November and there is only one location where you can deposit your ballot: the Hotel Novotel Madrid Center, from nine in the morning to eight in the evening .
“Do you think that encourages participation?
Is it good for a lawyer from Leganés to come one business day to a hotel in the center of Madrid to put in a ballot?” Beatriz Saura wonders.
“Many lawyers from small and medium-sized firms ask themselves: 'Why am I going to vote if later the ICAM does not look after my interests?' Trigo stresses.
"If it were not mandatory to join a college to practice, I am sure that 90% of the profession would not be part of the college," says Miguel Durán: "It is not a clean electoral process, it has been dark, the electoral commission itself is not pure.
They have not wanted there to be participation in order to be able to manipulate the result in favor of a continuist candidacy: that of Ribón”, adds without half measures the former president of ONCE and Telecinco —acquitted by the National Court in 2007 after being accused of tax crimes and falsehood for his management at the head of the chain—
Eugenio Ribón, who is part of Alonso's board and who assumes the inheritance of the current ICAM government, defends himself: “What does the school need?
People with excessive ambition who present their candidacy to promote their business project, people who present their candidacy as a political springboard.
Or is a solvent candidacy needed, with good accredited management?
Through a press release, his team reported that this past week he met with the spokesmen for the PSOE and the PP in the Justice commission of Congress: "This candidacy is the only one that has held meetings of marked institutional weight, when meeting with the two big parties in the chambers that make up the Legislative Power,” the statement noted.
José María Alonso, outgoing dean of ICAM, last Thursday at the ICAM headquarters. JUAN BARBOSA
Chinarro, Saura and Trigo especially hoist the flag of equality in their candidacies.
"Without nuances and without surnames," emphasizes the first.
“We are the only candidacy in which two women are running for dean and vice-dean,” Trigo highlights.
Meanwhile, Saura has denounced the lack of women on the last anniversary of the school, despite the opinion of the Equality Commission of the institution itself, which warned of this deficiency.
"Nobody resigned after the photos of the tables and presentations without women, that we are 50% of the school," Saura highlights on one of the issues that the campaign has starred in.
The president of the ICAM Equality Commission, Ángela Cerrillos, blamed Ribón for this lack of female presence, to whom she attributed the organization of the anniversary.
”Now that there is so much talk about women's equality, I have come with great experience in the fight against discrimination because I have fought against that suffered by disabled people.
When I got a girlfriend, I noticed her parents' rejection of their daughter marrying a blind man”, Miguel Durán also intervenes.
The significant resources invested by some candidates show the power at stake: several have hired press advisers and, for example, Ospina's team assured in mid-November that it had already spent 27,000 euros and that the members of its list had contributed up to 45,000 euro.
But, beyond the powerful gentleman Mr. Dinero, the last word will be with the lawyers who go to the polls.
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