They just don't learn their lessons. Far from investigating if there is a way to improve the organs that administer Spanish justice, at the very moment when the justice system has indisputably suffered its worst discredit in decades, the country's two most important political parties, PP and PSOE, are about to reach agreement for the renovation of the country's General Council of the Judiciary. And the agreement is to consist of allocating ten candidates to the right, ten more to the left and only allowing any argument over who will be the council's president. That is, the substitute for the terrible Carlos Lesmes.
It is said that the talks are being led by the current justice minister, María Dolores Delgado, and her predecessor, the PP's Rafael Catalá. And that seems surreal: they can call each other names, break off their relationship, label each other as coup proponents on the one hand and extremist-lovers on the other. But take care: one must always have one's real priorities clear and the sharing out of representation on a key organ of the justice system must be agreed on without any debate. Would it not be more appropriate, in view of the current failure of the selection of members for the judicial council, to investigate a different system? Open up a debate to do what, they must wonder. It would only end up reducing the power of the parties, something that, obviously, does not interest them.
The justice system will need to pay a lot of penitence to restore the credit it has lost. In very quick succession three very grave incidents have taken place: the dressing-down received from the European court in Strasburg with its judgement that the Basque political figure Arnaldo Otegi was sent to jail by an unjust trial in Spain's National Audience court; secondly, the issue of the stamp duty to be paid on mortgages, with the Supreme Court deciding to change its own ruling, unleashing a wave of popular indignation; and the most scandalous of all, the Catalan referendum case investigated by the Supreme Court, which continues to hold nine pro-independence Catalan political prisoners - honourable members of the Catalan government, MPs and civic leaders - in unfair and disproportionate situation of remand prison, with the public prosecutors having now demanded that the accused serve more than 200 years in jail.
This justice system needs a thorough renovation. Very thorough. And not just the relocation of those who have inflicted some of this harm. But maybe this is all very naïve. Since maybe, deep down, nobody wants to fix anything. And, to the few people who make the decisions, it already seems quite adequate. Perhaps even, very adequate.