This Tuesday, Isabel Perelló became the first woman to preside over the General Council of the Judiciary and the Supreme Court in the more than 200 years of history accumulated by both institutions. With a progressive profile, with almost four decades of practice in the courts and considered close to her former colleague Margarita Robles, Perelló takes the helm of a body of judges freshly emerged from a five-year blockade that damaged her prestige and with the task of renewing a hundred judges at the top of the Spanish judicial system. Her recent curriculum vitae highlights, among other decisions, the judgment that opened the door to the cancellation of the sale of 3,000 public housing units to the vulture funds of the Community of Madrid.
Perelló’s name is not one of those that has been heard the most in the last decade in a Chamber, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, already not very fond of the attention of the Supreme Court. She entered the judiciary before she was 30 and traveled through the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Andalusia before making the big leap to the central courts: first to the National Court and then, as a lawyer, to the Constitutional Court for a decade before accessing the Contentious Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court in 2009.
It took him a few years to enter the orbit of the progressive judicial association, Judges and Judges for Democracy, whose commissions he was already a member of in the mid-90s alongside men in robes who, years later, were his colleagues at the Supreme Court. She arrived at the High Court in the first quarter of 2009 with 14 votes out of 21 possible during the term of Carlos Dívar: the members highlighted that day her legal and constitutional career but also her “scientific quality” superior to that of her rivals.
Two months after crossing the threshold of the Supreme Court, Perelló faced a baptism of fire: the annulment of the candidacy of the Internationalist Initiative-Solidarity between Peoples of the playwright Alfonso Sastre. The judge participated in the deliberations of the “room of 61”, as she was one of the latest additions to the court and the result, unanimous on paper, was an order that annulled the candidacy, considering that it was the heir to the banned Batasuna.
The decree did not have individual votes but the decision was not unanimous: 11 magistrates voted for the cancellation of the candidacy and five against. Perelló was among those who positioned themselves against the cancellation. Time proved the current president of the Supreme Court right: shortly after, the Constitutional Court rehabilitated the list when it understood that there was no evidence linking Sastre to Batasuna.
Photo of the third room of the Supreme Court taken in 2022. In the center, the new president, Isabel Perelló (1), alongside the former president Carlos Lesmes (2). At the bottom, on the left, Pilar Teso (3) and Pablo Lucas (4), rejected candidates, as well as Angeles Huet (5).
Photo of the third room of the Supreme Court taken in 2022. In the center, the new president, Isabel Perelló (1), alongside the former president Carlos Lesmes (2). At the bottom, on the left, Pilar Teso (3) and Pablo Lucas (4), rejected candidates, as well as Angeles Huet (5).
Different sources from the Supreme Court detail about Perelló the traditional profile that emerges when judges talk about their colleagues and when they have already been almost unanimously appointed to a position of responsibility: far from vehemence, in favor of consensus and of a high technical level, which the Council had already envisaged for his appointment as a judge of the High Court 15 years ago.
Considered very close to Margarita Robles – now Minister of Defense but Perelló’s companion both in the Supreme Court and previously in the National Court – and a descendant of victims of the Franco dictatorship – her grandfather was shot –, her name gained consensus among conservative citizens and a good part of the progressives of the newly renewed judiciary. After four unsuccessful negotiations in which candidates such as Pilar Teso, Pablo Lucas or Ana Ferrer did not obtain the necessary votes, Perelló became the first woman to preside over the board of judges.
Perelló and the 3,000 IVIMA houses
Isabel Perelló has been working in the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court for 15 years, during which time she has presided over more than 1,200 decisions. Traditionally far from the sections that systematically analyzed the most publicized issues in the courtroom, such as the exhumation of Franco, Perelló has been the author of some resolutions that have had an impact on thousands of people.
One of them is the judgment that, in 2017, allowed the courts to annul the sale of almost 3,000 social housing units to a vulture fund by the Community of Madrid. This judgment, of which Perelló was the spokesperson, explained that the tenants of these homes had standing to contest the sale of their homes to Azora-Goldman Sachs by the Government of Madrid by affecting their degree of “social protection”. An authorization, until then denied by the courts, which opened the door to appeals that ended up annulling the entire operation.
That year, Perelló was also the author of a judgment that confirmed a fine of three million euros to BBVA for the irregular management of more than 224 million euros in offshore structures. Later, he also drafted a resolution that forced Radio Televisión Española to make public the salaries of its directors.
The new president of the General Council of the Judiciary also participated in the 2018 plenary session in which the Third Chamber established that the so-called mortgage tax should be paid by clients and not by banks, as had been initially decided. Perelló ran against the majority and signed a dissenting vote, alongside the now failed candidate Pablo Lucas, criticizing the decision of his colleagues. “We must avoid that in a few days the Supreme Court affirms one thing and its opposite, reversing itself,” explained this particular vote to know who tomorrow will take office as president of the organization.
