Independence. Cartoon of 29/06/2025 in CTXT
Translation of the cartoon: "For the independence of the judicial right as God intended".
Last Saturday, associations of judges and prosecutors rallied in front of the Supreme Court in Madrid and announced three days of strike action on 1, 2 and 3 July against the government's reforms, specifically against the"Bolaños law" (Organic Law 1/2025 of 2 January on measures to improve the efficiency of the Public Justice Service), which came into force on 3 April.
As far as I understand it, there are two points with which the strikers disagree, namely:
They believe that the reform of the system of access to the judicial and prosecutorial careers, which proposes the modification of the current selection processes, could lead to the use of more subjective or politicised criteria, weakening the principle of merit and capacity.
The other point is the reform of the Organic Statute of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which strengthens the figure of the state attorney general, a post directly appointed by the government, something which, according to the associations, increases the risk of political control over the Public Prosecutor's Office.
The conveners are five "conservative" groups: the Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM), the Francisco de Vitoria Judicial Association (AJFV), the Independent Judicial Forum (FJI), the Association of Prosecutors (AF) and the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF).
However, some of these associations, such as the Independent Judicial Forum, do not like being labelled as conservative by the media and have even sent notes of rectification to the media describing them as such. What is more, this group even has a couple of videos of those reductionist "neither left nor right" videos with an explicit title:"Neither conservative nor progressive".
I understand the intention of these"neither-nor" videos, but the end result is a very Falangist anti-political message, because it is people who write the laws and apply Justice, not entelechies or intangible concepts, and because, whatever they say, everything is a political matter.
Something that would put an end to all this false equidistance or misunderstood "independence" in the judiciary. Let judges and prosecutors be independent, let them militate wherever they feel like it, let them go on strike or camp or be sympathisers of the party they want without fear of saying so, and let them do everything that any other working citizen can legally do. Perhaps then we could begin to think of judges as normal people, workers in their own fields, and not as superior beings who are elevated above any ordinary human being.
These associations are maintaining the strike of judges and prosecutors, which begins today, despite the fact that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) considers it not to have been called because the strike has no legal basis.
For his part, the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, assured that"not a single line of the judicial reform affects either judicial independence or the rule of law, and I ask, please, that you read the bill to see that the reasons for today's rally are unfounded" and that they are arguments from the right (VOX and PP) that do not correspond to reality.
Well, I have read the texts, but ignorance got the better of me and, in the absence of a jurist to enlighten me on this alleged attack on judicial independence, or on the non-existence of this aggression, I had to limit myself to looking for some means to clear up my doubts in everyday language. But either all the means failed miserably, I have lost the ability to search, or the internet has broken down and returns only bad results.
These characters have so manipulated and devalued politics that they have managed to make saying that something is "politicised" be interpreted as something pejorative, an insult. Practising anti-politics from within politics is one of the worst insults to democracy and is all too reminiscent of various trappings of the past.
It is said that the dictator Franco, the one with the white ass, uttered this phrase:"You do as I do and stay out of politics". It is said that he uttered it to the editor of the newspaper "Arriba", Sabino Alonso Fueyo, when he complained that he was being pressured by various prominent figures in the National Movement. Other versions of the story say that he uttered it during a conversation with José María Pemán and in others with one of his ministers.
This message is the one that is most in line with what the peperos and other self-confessed ultra-rightists are trying to normalise (again). They want aseptic, controlled, grey, depoliticised, dead, public spaces. Do the political thing in privacy, the streets are ours. We are those "all" touched by God. And shut up with all this talk of plurality and dissent. That's what they want to tell us.
