Feijóo now cries out against the revolving doors in the Justice that the PP exploited: Marshal of Ghent, Enrique López, Lesmes

In the PP they know what they are talking about because they have elevated this practice to the category of virtue. Starting with the current president of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmes. Appointed during the government of Mariano Rajoy, whose absolute majority used the PP to shield a large conservative majority in constitutional bodies, he was twice director general in the governments of José María Aznar. Between 1996 and 2000, he was a Conscientious Objector. Later, until 2004, of Relations with the Administration of Justice.

His passage through the Executive branch hand in hand with the party that Feijóo leads today did not prevent him from reaching the top of the Spanish judicial system. Lesmes went to the National High Court, where the then CGPJ –appointed during Aznar’s absolute majority– promoted him to president of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber. He later jumped to the Supreme Court, to the Third Chamber, also with conservative support. There he was the rapporteur for the banning of Sortu, which was later annulled by the Constitutional Court. And from there, to preside over the CGPJ and the Supreme Court.

This process has also worked in reverse. Someone who exemplifies it very well is Senator Fernando de Rosa, who in a recent intervention in the Upper House gave a lesson on independence between State powers, while accusing the Government of wanting to “occupy” the Constitutional Court. “The renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary is the means to achieve the end: to appoint magistrates who stain their togas with the dust of the road, as Cándido Conde-Pumpido said,” he assured without his voice trembling.

But, who is Fernando de Rosa? He is a senator, but before he has been many things. De Rosa is a judge and became dean in Valencia, when he was already publicly active in the PP. He then made the leap into politics. In 2003, Francisco Camps, whom he himself affiliated with Manuel Fraga’s Popular Alliance, appointed him Secretary of Justice of the Valencian Generalitat. In the following legislature he was promoted to Minister of Justice and Public Administrations, but a year later he left to head to the General Council of the Judiciary: De Rosa went from regional councilor of the PP to vice president of the governing body of the judges. Later he returned to the judiciary: the new CGPJ, who came to preside over the economic scandals of Carlos Dívar, appointed him president of the Provincial Court of Valencia. It was 2015. Four years later, Pablo Casado signed him for the Senate lists, in which he reached his current destination.

They are two examples of the historic transfer of PP leaders to Justice, and vice versa. Two of many. One not far from the Senate where Feijóo and De Rosa coexist would be that of Enrique López. The current Minister of the Presidency, Justice and the Interior in the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso negotiated on behalf of the Casado PP the failed attempts to unblock the renewal of the CGPJ.

But before that, he had a long and successful judicial career that took him, in the last section, to the top of the National High Court, specifically to the newly created Appeals Chamber of the specialized court. In 2001, José María Aznar’s PP, again thanks to his absolute majority, elected him a member of the CGPJ. In the governing body of the judges, he was appointed spokesman and became one of the scourges of the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his social advances, with angry official declarations as a representative of the Judiciary against equal marriage, the Statute of Catalonia , against the Gender Violence Law or the Historical Memory Law.

After leaving the CGPJ in 2008, he continued his rise. Two years later, all the autonomous communities governed by the PP endorsed him as a candidate for the Constitutional Court. For seven years the PP had been trying to place Enrique López in the court that interprets the fundamental norm with the opposition of the PSOE, which considered that he did not meet the established requirements. Finally, Enrique López joined the court that interprets the fundamental rule and whether the laws of the different governments conform to it. But the magistrate had to resign in 2014 for riding a motorcycle with triple the permitted alcohol level.

The case of Enrique López is paradigmatic. After his brief stint at the Constitutional Court, he returned to his place at the National High Court, but his own colleagues removed him from the courts that would judge PP corruption cases for breaching the precept of “appearance of impartiality” . In 2019, Ayuso incorporated him into his Government. In an interview that he gave to La Razón in 2021, he said: “The PP has the support of the majority of the judicial career.” Along the same lines, just a few days ago, the new president of the Constitutional Court, Pedro González-Trevijano, assured The country: “Jurists are almost all conservatives.”

There are other previous cases, such as the Minister of Justice of the first Aznar Government, Margarita Mariscal de Gante, who came to the Council of Ministers after becoming the first woman elected as a member of the CGPJ, in 1990 and at the proposal of the PP. Marshal of Ghent was a PP deputy for Albacete between 2000 and 2004. She was later appointed, also at the proposal of the PP, to the Court of Auditors, where she oversees the finances of all the parties, including the PP. Or José Merino Jiménez, who went from General Director of Relations with the Administration of Justice of the Community of Madrid chaired by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón to being elected a member of the CGPJ at the proposal of the PP, during Aznar’s absolute majority.

The PP considers the Government “abusive”

With this backpack in tow, the PP of Feijóo has made judicial independence the parapet for not agreeing to renew the CGPJ, whose mandate is on the way to four years expired. A blockade initiated by Casado’s PP (to whose leadership Enrique López belonged) and that has been extended to the Constitutional Court, which has four vacancies since last June.

The conservative sector of the Judiciary has decided to boycott the appointments that correspond to it by order of the 1978 Constitution. And, without these appointments, the Government cannot undertake its own, since they go hand in hand according to the fundamental norm of the State.

The process would lead to the natural alternation that occurs in the high constitutional bodies and that, according to what those who drafted the fundamental law and those who ratified it in a referendum wanted, must respond to a certain extent to popular representation in the General Courts and the Government. This is how it has been until now with the conservative bloc, which has even taken its control far beyond what is legally established.

But this seems “abusive” to the PP. This has been written by the Deputy Secretary of Institutional Policy, Esteban González Pons, one of the leaders who exerts the most influence over Feijóo, in a letter sent this Thursday to his counterpart in the Government, the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños.

Pons personalizes the blockade strategy of the Judiciary, inherited from Casado and increased by the new leadership. He has considered the negotiations broken, has recovered them or has justified the refusal of his party to comply with the constitutional mandate. He is the figurehead of the PP in its supposed journey towards judicial independence. The same González Pons who was deputy secretary of Studies and Programs of the party when, in 2013, Rajoy used his absolute majority to reduce the majorities necessary to renew the CGPJ without the opposition. As a deputy, he voted in favor of the reform.

In the letter, Pons (on behalf of Feijóo) reiterates the conditions of the PP to agree to comply with the Constitution and the law. Some requirements that go beyond the CGPJ itself and concern, for example, the “revolving doors” between politics and Justice. Or to the State Attorney General’s Office. To the oppositions to access the judiciary (preparators who charge in B and classism through), but so that they are not modified in this case. Or to eliminate the role of the autonomous parliaments in the appointment of magistrates of the regional superior courts of justice.

A collection of requirements that the PP considers “minimum” and that they have always considered a whole that the Government must accept as a precondition for Feijóo and his people to sit down to negotiate. An attempt to convert its 88 deputies into a sufficient majority to change laws that the other parties do not want to modify.

The PP has not even hesitated to use the European institutions in its crusade and, although the European Commission does “recommend” Spain to move towards a CGPJ more independent of the parties, the last time it spoke it was clear: first , renewal of the Judiciary; and then discuss the reform. However, in his latest offensive after Carlos Lesmes has threatened to resign as head of the judges’ government, Pons has sent two letters to the European Vice President in charge of Values ​​and Transparency, the Czech Vera Jourová, and to the Justice Commissioner, Belgian Didier Reynders.

Less than 10 years after modifying the law to leave the opposition without maneuver and appoint a similar CGPJ declared in absentia, the PP has discovered with scandal, like Renault in Rick’s Cafe, that “here is played”, that is, the collusion between politicians and high judicial officials. In the anti-Nazi film shot in 1942, the police chief closes down the gambling hall while receiving his share of the profits. A metaphor that fits like a glove to the situation of Spanish justice 80 years later.