Carlos Lesmes, the twilight of a president in low hours who resigns after almost four years in office

The 64-year-old magistrate said goodbye, distributing blame equally to the Government and the PP, whom he reproached for their “repeated indifference” to his calls to tackle a situation that “weakens and erodes the main institutions of Justice and the State of Law”. After his resignation, he will return “immediately” to his office as magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court. From there he left in 2013 after being proposed by the Government of Mariano Rajoy as president of the governing body of the 5,300 Spanish judges. His appointment had the acquiescence of the PSOE, then led by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Before, he had been a high position in the Governments of José María Aznar. Until his appointment as president, he was a member of the conservative and majority Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM).

Since then, Lesmes has led a very presidential body thanks to a reform approved alone by the PP in 2013 and in whose elaboration he himself collaborated. This rule has empowered him to propose the members of the almighty Permanent Commission, a kind of hard core that has in its hands many decisions on important matters that were previously debated in plenary. Its seven members, in addition, are the only members who have a salary and exclusive dedication compared to the other 13 who must attend the plenary sessions by traveling from where they reside and combining their task in the CGPJ with their work.

His last stage at the head of the body has been marked by the breach of the legal mandate to carry out the two Constitutional Court appointments that correspond to the CGPJ. That blockade has been promoted by eight of the ten members elected at the proposal of the PP, who have used different subterfuges to delay appointments that are almost a month late. The date set by law was September 13. Precisely this blockage has shown his loneliness at the head of the organ. Although he tried for weeks, he was not able to convince the members who promoted him to the presidency almost a decade ago of the advisability of making those appointments.

His resignation is also not viewed favorably by a majority of members, who question the “institutional devastation” that his departure entails. Others maintain that his resignation will “aggravate” even more the situation in which the governing body of the judges finds itself. Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself, who heads the party that proposed him as president, said last September that it would make no sense for the “captain of the ship” to resign.

Appointments in the judicial dome

During his mandate, the Judiciary has staged notorious clashes with the coalition Executive. The reform that regulates the interim of the CGPJ has been one of the greatest points of friction between both powers of the State. In his last public speech as president in the solemn act of Opening of the Judicial Year, he described the effects of this rule as “devastating”, which was promoted by the PSOE and United We Can and had broad parliamentary support. “The mess is so great that a similar situation had not occurred in the leadership of the Spanish Justice in the entire history of our democracy,” he asserted.

The government partners have defended that the objective was to end a legal vacuum, since until then the only competence that the acting CGPJ could not exercise was to appoint a new president. But behind its approval was also the attempt to increase the pressure so that the PP would agree to renew the governing body of the judges after several failed attempts. The blockade has been maintained despite the legal change and the consequences of this paralysis are already being seen in the courts. Especially, in the Supreme Court, where there are 14 unfilled vacancies out of a plant of 79 magistrates.

Until then, and during more than two and a half years of extended mandate, the CGPJ outlined a large part of the composition of the main courts for the coming years. He agreed on 74 appointments in the judicial leadership, 21 of them in the Supreme Court, where they are considered especially sensitive because those positions, unless resigned, are maintained until retirement, set for judges and magistrates at 72 years of age.

The one related to the appointments has not been the only clash between the Judicial Power of Lesmes and the Coalition Executive. In January 2020, just two days after taking office, the CGPJ launched the first notice to the then Vice President of the Government Pablo Iglesias for his criticism of the judges. The organ asked him to avoid “the political use” of Justice after describing in an interview as “humiliation” that “many” European courts had “taken the reason” of Spanish judges in resolutions related to the procés. Three months later, in April 2020 and in full confinement, the body failed Iglesias again after he assured in a tweet that “an enormous feeling of injustice” invaded him after being convicted of a crime of attack and minor injuries in a protest against an eviction of the Podemos spokeswoman Isabel Serra.

Previously, in January, there had been another moment of tension between the two institutions as a result of the election of former Justice Minister Dolores Delgado as State Attorney General. At the proposal of Lesmes, the CGPJ avoided ruling on Delgado’s suitability for the position —as it had done on the four previous occasions— and limited itself to accepting that she met the requirements “demanded by law.”

The battered relationship between the Government and the leadership of the Judicial Power had another episode with the delivery of judges’ offices in 2020. Moncloa vetoed Felipe VI’s attendance at that act, held in Barcelona, ​​after knowing that it would coincide with the sentence about the disqualification of Quim Torra. In the Executive, although they did not communicate it to public opinion, they understood that the monarch had to be shielded from possible incidents and they tried to postpone it and distance it as much as possible from the political tension that the ruling could cause, to which Lesmes refused. In fact, he even revealed a courtesy call from Felipe VI, a movement that in Moncloa was interpreted as a use of the Crown as a battering ram against the Executive.

Lesmes has also publicly questioned another of the Executive’s actions: the pardons given to the leaders of the procés and the fact that the Government justified the measure of grace for constituting “concord against resentment.” “Nothing is further from reality,” he stated in his speech at the Opening of the Judicial Year last year, where he reiterated that “justice is not, nor has it ever been, an obstacle to peace, but the fundamental instrument to safeguard order and, therefore, peaceful coexistence among citizens”.

They have also received reproaches from the Executive for their critical reports on regulations that consolidate social advances such as the housing law or the democratic memory law. For example, Lesmes signed, together with the conservative majority, a report that questions the control of rental prices and warns of the “problematic fit” of the housing law in the constitutional order of powers. “The most conservative part of society has always resisted the great advances of socialist governments,” said the head of Housing, Raquel Sánchez. The CGPJ also questioned whether the Government can ban Francoist foundations as provided for in the memory law. “To exalt Francoism is to continue vilifying the victims and their relatives”, reacted the then vice president Carmen Calvo.

The mortgage crisis

However, the worst credibility crisis of Lesmes’ mandate took place in October 2018, when he had to publicly apologize for the change in the Supreme Court’s criteria on mortgage tax. “We have not managed it well,” he said after the president of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber submitted for review a jurisprudence that was detrimental to the bank due to the “social and economic” impact that the conviction had caused. Then, all the parties were on the side of the clients and the socialist government came to speak of a “very black day” for Justice.

Lesmes was a high position in the PP Government, in the Ministry of Justice, under the orders of all the ministers of the branch appointed by José María Aznar: Margarita Mariscal de Gante, Ángel Acebes and José María Michavila. In Aznar’s first legislature –between 1996 and 2000–, Lesmes was general director of Conscientious Objection. In the second, he was general director of Relations with the Administration of Justice, a key position in that ministry because he is the one who liaises between the Government and the judges.

After eight years in the Aznar government, Lesmes went to the National High Court, where the then CGPJ – conservative, 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. He will return to that position now after his resignation and will stay there “for the next few years,” he said in his farewell video. It is, without a doubt, a phrase addressed to all those who in recent weeks —inside and outside the body— have speculated about his intention to be promoted to the Constitutional Court.