Barely 24 hours after taking office before Felipe VI, Isabel Perelló made her first public speech as president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and the Supreme Court, during the solemn opening ceremony of the judicial year. For 15 minutes, the new president delivered a feminist speech, in which she recognized 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 professional and social spheres.” social life.
Perelló is the first woman in history to preside over the judiciary since its creation in 1812. A milestone that took more than 200 years to reach and that did not go unnoticed in her speech. “I was born in a Spain where 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. However, there is still a long way to go: women remain a minority in high 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 Government Chamber of the Supreme Court, Perelló affirmed that the governing body of judges is prepared to face the “many challenges” that await it after “very difficult years”, he defended his commitment to “judicial independence” and the “right to disagree” with judicial decisions as long as they are not accompanied by “disqualification or insult”. And he warned that “no power of the State can give instructions to judges on how to interpret the judicial system”.
After the exceptional nature of recent years, the opening of the judicial year was celebrated on this occasion in a radically different atmosphere. Mainly due to the renewal of the governing body of judges after a complex political agreement that the Popular Party resisted for years with ever more numerous and changing excuses. The event brought together the twenty new members of the CGPJ, who managed to reach an agreement in extremis on the person who should lead the most important institution of the third power of the State for the next five years. The election of Perelló, which came after five weeks of intense negotiations, also means that the first chair of the Spanish justice system will once again be occupied by a person with a progressive profile after almost three decades.
