The Constitutional Court rejected the PP’s appeal against the 2022 legal reform which circumvented the effects of the blockade of the Judicial Council to facilitate the last partial renewal of the Guarantee Court. The majority of the plenary session rejected the allegations of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party against the modification that allowed the CGPJ to appoint two constitutional magistrates, even though, at the time, another previous reform prevented it from making appointments due to the expiration of his mandate. . It was the renewal of four judges which reversed the arithmetic of the Court and imposed a progressive majority unprecedented in more than a decade.
According to judicial sources reported to elDiario.es, the plenary session took the decision with one vote against, that of the magistrate and former member of the Council, José María Macías. Two of the judges favoring dismissing the appeal announced simultaneous private votes. César Tolosa and María Luisa Segoviano, two former Supreme Court judges appointed to the Constitutional Court thanks to this reform, abstained from participating in these deliberations.
The Government has launched several legal initiatives between 2021 and 2022 to overcome the effects of the blockade perpetrated by the PP for not renewing the General Council of the Judiciary, whose mandate expired since the end of 2018. A first measure was taken in mid -2021. to prevent the ruling body of judges from making appointments to the judicial leadership and the Supreme Court after its mandate has expired. A year later, the time has come to partially renew the Constitutional Court, and it is the turn of the Government and the CGPJ to each appoint two magistrates.
This partial renewal has become a key moment for the future of the guarantee court: this renewal of four members would imply, in practice, a progressive majority for the next nine years. The executive then decided to modify the organic law of the judiciary to introduce an exception to the ban on appointment of the CGPJ and allow it to appoint its two magistrates.
This renewal did not take place immediately after this lifting of the veto on appointments. Negotiations within the CGPJ became acrimonious when the conservative part of its members refused to support the progressive candidate: José Manuel Bandrés. Weeks of negotiations ended with César Tolosa and María Luisa Segoviano at the Constitutional Court, also giving way to an unprecedented institutional conflict: the conservative majority that then prevailed in the Court paralyzed the parliamentary process of a new reform with which the government intended to overcome the conservatives’ blockade of the judiciary.
