The nine progressive members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) who have signed a statement in which they point out that the president, Isabel Perelló, “has led the breaking of the consensus mandate, ignoring the members” who represent 45% of the plenary session. The councilors have made this decision after in the plenary session held this Thursday, Perelló and one of the two members proposed by Sumar, Carlos Hugo Preciado, added their votes to the conservatives to give the majority to this bloc and relegate the progressive sector in the permanent commission, the main decision-making body of the Council after the plenary session. Sources from the body indicate that, as a consequence of this decision, the progressive member José María Fernández Seijo has given Perelló a letter in which he announces his intention to resign.
The plenary session of the Council held this week has blown up the fragile balance in which the body was, especially the progressive bloc, since it was established in July 2024, after the agreement between the PSOE and the PP to renew the CGPJ five years late (the previous one had its mandate extended from 2018). To the break with the majority of the progressive sector of one of the members proposed by Sumar and the criticism of Perelló from that group, has been added the announced resignation of Fernández Seijo, who until now has been one of the main negotiators with the conservative group on issues such as the discretionary appointments agreed upon so far in his term. Fernández Seijo has delivered a letter to Perelló in which he announces his resignation and, as sources close to him explain to this newspaper, the decision is “irrevocable” and is due to “personal reasons.”
In the note released this Thursday by the progressive group, the eight members proposed by the PSOE and one of the two proposed by Sumar warn that what happened this Thursday “has special institutional significance: the renewal of the commissions, essential operating and political decision-making bodies on which the Council’s activity is articulated.” “It is, therefore, a structural decision, determining the internal balance and the correct performance of its functions,” they add.
The distance between one of the two Sumar members, Carlos Hugo Preciado, and the rest of the progressive members had been evident for months, but this Thursday’s decision makes it official and implies, in practice, that the CGPJ is divided into three groups: one formed by 10 conservative members, another by nine progressive members and a third made up solely of this advisor proposed by Sumar, who in a statement released by his surroundings defines himself as “independent progressive.” But the plenary vote this Thursday also showed that Perelló is closer to this member and to the conservative core than to the progressive.
The group of nine members from this sector who have signed the statement are Ángel Arozamena, Lucía Avilés, Ricardo Bodas, Esther Erice, Bernardo Fernández, José María Fernández Seijo, Inés Herreros, Luis Martín and Argelia Queralt. In the text they explain that, during the first year of the mandate, the Council had achieved “an operation based on cooperation, respect and co-responsibility.”
This balance was supported by operating rules agreed upon in September 2024 when agreeing on the composition of the legal commissions in which the daily functioning of the CGPJ is organized, which, according to the progressives, ensured, among other criteria, “the reasonable representation of different sensitivities”, “the balanced distribution of responsibilities” and the adoption of decisions “through dialogue and transparency.” “This model allowed a year of stable work, more than 160 judicial appointments and a climate of internal trust unprecedented in previous stages,” they say.
But that framework of consensus, according to these councilors, “has been broken abruptly and deliberately” in this week’s plenary session. The progressives explain that the Plenary Session began on Wednesday and resumed on Thursday, with the item relating to the composition of the commissions on the agenda, which included three proposals: one for each block and another from Preciado, which included only the names of each group, as no prior agreement had been reached. In Thursday’s session, the president demanded to “correct” the progressive proposal to include all the members, after the conservative bloc presented a closed list that already included the names of the other bloc, “without prior consultation or communication,” according to the progressives. Finally, the list presented by member Preciado was approved, identical to that of the conservative bloc, with the votes of the ten conservative members, Preciado himself and the president.
The distribution resulting from this vote means that of the 11 commissions there are nine with a conservative majority and only two in which the block of nine progressive members has a majority. The progressives, in addition, lose weight in the main commission, the permanent one, which is made up of Preciado, two progressive members (Bernardo Fernández and Argelia Queralt) and three conservatives (Eduardo Martínez Mediavilla, Isabel Revuelta, Carlos Orga and Alejandro Abascal).
For the nine progressives who remain in the minority, this distribution is “arbitrary and unbalanced, and responds more to a logic of exclusion than to institutional criteria.”
These councilors also complain that the conservative bloc and the president have recognized the member Preciado with “a representativeness and weight within the council that is much higher than that of any other member and is equated to that of another group. This fact, in itself, breaks with any rule of distribution that is no longer proportional, but balanced within any collegiate body,” they say.
The member proposed by Sumar who has split from the rest of the group has a version and, according to the statement released on Thursday by those around him, the “balance between sensitivities has been generally preserved in the renewal”, and adds: “although the progressives closest to the Ministry of Justice have lost weight with respect to the independent progressive options”, a trend in which, according to that text, only he is a part.
The nine progressives reproach Perelló that, with his actions, “he has broken […] the basic conditions of trust that she herself had proclaimed at the beginning of the mandate.” What happened this week, they affirm, “does not constitute a simple internal reorganization: it is the conscious rupture of the consensus that had governed this first year, a blow to plural representation and a serious distortion of institutional collegiality.”
