Barely 24 hours after taking the oath of office before Felipe VI, Isabel Perelló has made her first public appearance as president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the Supreme Court at the solemn opening ceremony of the Judicial Year. For 15 minutes, the new president has delivered a feminist speech, in which she recognised the struggle of women who have worked for the “right to equality” and to end the “undeserved invisibility to which they have been subjected in the different areas of professional and social life”.
Perelló is the first woman in history to preside over the governing body of judges since the creation of this judicial body in 1812. A milestone that has taken more than 200 years to achieve and which has not gone unnoticed in her speech. “I was born in a Spain in which women could not access the judicial career. Now we are the majority (…). We had to wait until the 21st century to reach the Supreme Court. Even so, there is still a long way to go: women are still a minority in senior judicial positions,” she said.
Before King Felipe VI, the Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the Governing Chamber of the Supreme Court, Perelló has affirmed that the governing body of the judges is prepared to face the “numerous challenges” that lie ahead after “very difficult years”, she has defended her commitment to “judicial independence” and to the “right to disagree” with judicial decisions as long as they are not accompanied by “disqualification or insult”. And she has warned that “no power of the State can give instructions to judges on how to interpret the legal system”.
After the exceptional events of recent years, the opening of the Judicial Year has been celebrated this time with a radically different atmosphere. Mainly, due to the renewal of the governing body of the judges after a complex political agreement that the Popular Party resisted for years with increasing and changing excuses. The event was attended by the twenty new members of the CGPJ, who managed to agree in extremis on the person who should lead the most important institution of the third power of the State during the next five years. The election of Perelló, which took place after five weeks of intense negotiations, also means that the first seat of the Spanish judiciary will once again be occupied by a person with a progressive profile after almost three decades.
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