Spain’s General Council of the Judiciary elected Supreme Court judge Isabel Perelló as its president on September 3, 2024, making her the first woman selected to lead both the council and the country’s highest court.
Perelló received 16 of the council’s 20 votes. The remaining four went to fellow Supreme Court judge Ana Ferrer. The result comfortably exceeded the three-fifths threshold of 12 votes required for election and combined support from all 10 members associated with the conservative bloc and six from the progressive bloc.
The vote concluded five formal meetings and extensive informal talks after the newly renewed council struggled to find a consensus candidate. Spain’s two largest parties, the Socialist Workers’ Party and the People’s Party, had agreed in July to renew the body after five years of deadlock. The council then had to choose its own president.
Perelló emerged as a firm candidate only near the end of the negotiations, after members agreed to consider names outside an initial list of seven Supreme Court judges. Pilar Teso, who had been the progressive group’s early preference, withdrew. Conservative members proposed Perelló, and a majority of progressives accepted her as a compromise.
Born in Sabadell in 1958, Perelló entered the judiciary in 1985 and joined the Supreme Court’s administrative-law chamber in 2009. Her earlier posts included courts in Mahón, Barcelona, Catalonia and Andalusia, as well as the National Court. She also worked as a legal adviser at the Constitutional Court. She was associated with Judges for Democracy and was generally regarded as progressive.
Her selection carried institutional significance beyond the gender milestone. The council oversees senior judicial appointments and disciplinary matters and had suffered reputational damage during the prolonged failure to renew its membership. The evenly divided new body needed cross-bloc support to fill the presidency and begin operating normally.
Justice Minister Félix Bolaños welcomed the outcome and described the appointment of the first woman to the positions as an important development. Council members, meanwhile, emphasised that they had made the choice themselves rather than simply confirming a name negotiated in advance by political parties.
The timetable was tight. Perelló was expected to swear or promise her oath before King Felipe VI and take office on Wednesday, allowing her to preside over the formal opening of the judicial year on Thursday. Her election filled a leadership vacancy and ended an initial impasse inside the reconstituted council, while also breaking a historic barrier at the head of Spain’s judiciary.
