The head of the Civil Guard in Madrid, Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos, has resigned after they agreed with him and annulled three promotions to general in which he considered that his candidacy was undervalued. This has been communicated by Pérez de los Cobos’ lawyer to the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court, which this same Thursday once again annulled a promotion challenged by the colonel and annulled the promotion to brigadier general of the armed institute of David Blanes.
Pérez de los Cobos has been winning one by one the lawsuits he has filed in the Supreme Court against promotions granted by the Ministry of the Interior to other colonels in competitions in which he had entered. However, these victories have had no effect because the lawsuits have been prolonged with new appointments and appeals that have delayed the execution of the sentences. It was already assumed that these would not be able to be carried out before next December, when Pérez de los Cobos turns 61 and must go into the reserve if he is not a general.
According to a statement released by the Milans del Bosch&ITL office, which represents the colonel, the letter sent to the Supreme Court openly criticizes “the arbitrariness that constitutes violations of the legal system that by the Ministries of the Interior and Defense and the General Directorate of the Civil Guard are being committed in the processes of promotion to the position of Brigadier General of the Civil Guard.” The text places the beginning of the conflict in 2020, when Pérez de los Cobos, a dismissal that was also revoked by the high court, forcing the Interior to return him to that position.
The letter, according to his lawyers, also mentions “the judicial successes” obtained in this litigation by having achieved, in addition to the annulment of the dismissal, that the Supreme Court has also upheld the seven appeals presented for promotions to brigadier general in the Civil Guard. . In these resolutions, the text states, the court “has defined the actions that must be corrected by the General Directorate of the Civil Guard and the Ministries of the Interior and Defense to not continue transforming discretion into arbitrariness.”
Last July, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber issued three rulings that once again upheld the appeals raised by Pérez de los Cobos against the promotions to brigade of three colonels and ordered their annulment, which meant that they had to return to the colonel job. In this regard, the brief presented by Pérez de los Cobos’ lawyers states that these three colonels – Francisco Javier Sánchez Gil, Arturo Prieto Bozec and Antonio Rodríguez Medel Nieto – “are in no way responsible for the illegal actions of the Administration.” . “It is not the intention of Colonel Don Diego Pérez de los Cobos Orihuel to affect the professional career of these colleagues of his with traumatic decisions that may be irreversible, this party informs the High Court that he will not request the forced execution of the sentences ( …) at the same time as requesting the archive of the resources.”
