Spanish Judges on Strike

“Save the rule of Law in Spain”, read a banner held by a number of unidentified judges who were demonstrating before the premises of the Spanish Supreme Court, a couple of days ago in Madrid. But save it – from whom? The demonstrators would no doubt reply: from Pedro Sánchez and his government, which has undertaken the first serious reform of the Spanish judiciary since the transition to democracy, that is, since the death of Franco in 1975. Alas, the Spanish judges do not seem to like either the spirit or the letter of the reform and convoked a strike in the first days of July.

Though judges (and prosecutors) have been on strike a number of times before in Spain, this time is different. The governing body of the Spanish judges, the “Consejo General del Poder Judicial”, declared by unanimity that judges cannot exercise the right to strike as they belong to the triad of constitutional powers. But is the reform the only reason why the Spanish judges have been on strike? As it will turn out, an amnesty law is also lurking behind the Spanish judiciary’s daring move.

The ideology of Spanish judges

Let us take a look, as an aperitivo, at the ideology of Spanish judges. As I have argued here before, the ideology of the Spanish judges is one of the best kept secrets of current Spanish politics. We simply do not know – and do not want to know. Though there are some research projects that are looking indirectly at this point, in a general survey on the ideology of EU judges, the matter of the ideological leaning of the Spanish judges has been conveniently hidden under the argument that “courts are the blindfolded lady of justice”. Judges’ apparent ideological neutrality has prevented the Spanish mass media (and also the Spanish intellectual elites) from investigating this crucial aspect of local politics, at least until now.

In empirical terms, we know, however, a couple of things. For example, from the four national judges organisations that exist in Spain, three are of a conservative inclination. Only the association “Jueces para la Democracia” (Judges for democracy) has a clear progressive orientation. Judges do not have to be members of any of these associations, and as a matter of fact, judicial membership in these associations is not particularly high in Spain (58% in 2024). But in terms of numbers, the association that has more members is the very conservative Asociación Profesional de la Magistratura (Professional Association for the Magistrature), which, together with the other two conservative associations, form a true column in Spanish judicial policy making.

A second hint of what the political ideology of Spanish judges might be comes from how the recruitment process is structured in Spain. The first piece of this process is the so-called “oposición” (concours). Candidates have to memorize by heart an important number of topics that form part of a very extensive syllabus in law. They have to “sing” (in the Spanish judicial candidates’ jargon) some of these topics before a jury that is mostly formed by judges. The second important piece of this system is the so-called “preparador” (trainer). The trainer trains the candidate to master the capricious skill to sing all the topics that form the judges’ concours in the clearest possible way and in the least amount of time. Guess who are the trainers? Bingo: for its most part, they are the judges themselves. This is when judges’ selection becomes a form of co-optation.

Normally it is calculated that a candidate needs to invest around €300 per month in order to pay to her “preparador”. If one adds to the maths that, on average, the candidate needs at the very least three years and at most five years in order to prepare this concours, then the result is: €10,800 in the best of scenarios (if a candidate invested only three years to get ready to make the concours). To this, one household has to add the cost of life expenses during all this time (working is incompatible with preparing the judicial concours). Cleary, not many people in the low-wage country that Spain is can afford this important economic effort. Economists teach us that correlation is not causation: but it is not that complicated to trace an argumentative line that links high income households with ideological conservativism, with judicial candidates – and finally, with judges. It is also true that here we can only guess: no one has demonstrated empirically speaking, to the best of my knowledge, and for Spain, that this connection holds. But system 1 (our intuitive self) tells us that it does.

The proposed reform

The social-democratic government’s proposed reform has three main limbs. The first affects the judicial concours. For example, the bill establishes a number of grants that the candidates with less economic resources may benefit from during the concours’ preparation phase. It also converts the “Centro de Estudios Jurídicos para la Administración de Justicia” (the Center for Studies of the Administration of Justice, a public organ) into a Center that also deals with education and preparation of judicial candidates. The idea is to break the vicious circle that has been described above, in which only the most affluent can accede the preparation of the concours, into a virtuous circle in which all people – no matter their socio-economic background – can get access to the concours’ preparation.

The second limb has to do with the examination phase. Instead of favouring the rote repetition of contents (which is not totally eliminated by the reform), the project also introduces practical exercises, anonymous tests, and the recording of oral exams. Finally, the third limb establishes provisions whose implementation would open the door for around 1,000 substitute judges to become permanent ones. This measure has faced significant opposition from different sectors – even from progressive ones, which have supported an amendment to the project tightening the requirements to become a permanent judge.

The reform has been received by the judiciary (by the most conservative sector of it) as an attempt by the government to curtail judicial independence. Leaving aside the issue of the conversion of around 1,000 substitute judges into permanent ones, which has received the unanimous disapproval of all the Spanish judicial associations, it is hard to see how a humble reform of this kind could alter the balance of powers in Spain, and attribute more power to the executive branch of government, as the demonstrators claim.

The true reason is that the transformation of the preparation phase into a far more egalitarian way to access the judicial career bothers many judges in Spain. For them, this is a direct way to water down a sacrosanct system that has proved its own success along the years. However, it is also possible to think that the reform goes straightly to break the co-optation system (and the crony business) that has worked so well during decades in Spain. Judges do not want to lose grip of the decision of who becomes a judge in Spain. However, they have enveloped this issue into an assault on the independence of the judicial system by the government. But there is more.

Catalonia, again

On 26 June 2025, the plenary of the Spanish Constitutional Court decided to declare the Spanish amnesty law constitutional, without making recourse to a judicial preliminary proceeding before the European Court of Justice which the Constitutional Court explicitly rejected. The Spanish amnesty law was promulgated on 10 June 2024. It was one of the most important commitments of the current government and grants amnesty for acts that have been declared or were classified as criminal offenses or as conduct giving rise to administrative or accounting liability,¹⁾ linked to the consultation held in Catalonia on 9 November 2014, and the referendum of 1 October 2017.²⁾ In effect, the latest national election of July 2023 was a pyrrhic victory for Pedro Sánchez and the Spanish socialist party: the Popular Party won the election in terms of both seats and number of votes; but the only political party that could form a coalition that encompassed the far left and the conservative pro-independence Catalan political parties was the socialist party. The amnesty law was at the core of the main deal that was struck down, with a myriad of ideologically very different political parties. It is not by chance that the subtitle of the amnesty law was “law for the institutional, political and social normalization of Catalonia”.

In fact, Catalonia’s political life has been step by step normalized in the Sánchez years – not only during the current legislature, but also during the previous ones: opinion polls in the last years show a decreasing support for independence in Catalonia. The political cost that was borne in Madrid has yielded major pay-offs in Catalonia, with the Catalan socialist party winning the latest regional election; in fact, the current President of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia is a socialist.

The approval of the amnesty law, together with the Spanish Constitutional Court’s favourable ruling on its legitimacy, has been interpreted by parts of the Spanish judiciary, particularly its most conservative section, as a felony. It has been received as an act of treason. The negative reception of the current judicial reform by Spanish judges, which has been the main focus of this article, cannot be understood outside the highly charged political context.

As for the future, it seems probable that the Sánchez years are coming to an end. The recent corruption scandals that have affected the Spanish socialist party constitute a grave wound that will compromise the life of the current coalition. But maybe there is still time to approve a reform that would make the Spanish judiciary more egalitarian and more open to the different strata that compose the Spanish society.