Spain Appoints Isabel Perello As First Woman To Lead Supreme Court
On Tuesday, Spain made history by appointing Isabel Perello as the country’s top judge. This is the first time a woman has been chosen to lead the Supreme Court. This appointment also ends a protracted deadlock that has plagued the judiciary for years.
Perello, 66, was elected as the president of both the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), a legal body responsible for appointing judges and maintaining the judiciary’s independence. The council confirmed her appointment in a statement, noting that she received the support of 16 out of its 20 members.
This appointment makes Perello the first woman to head Spain’s Supreme Court since its establishment in 1812 and the first to lead the CGPJ. The council’s mandate expired in December 2018, leading to an interim operation due to the inability of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s ruling Socialists and the main opposition Popular Party (PP) to agree on its composition.
The stalemate had significantly impacted the Spanish court system, resulting in over 100 judicial vacancies and drawing criticism from Brussels, which even attempted to mediate the dispute. The recent agreement between the Socialists and the PP on renewing the CGPJ’s 20 members paved the way for Perello’s nomination.
Prime Minister Sanchez congratulated Perello in a message on X, praising her as the first woman to preside over the Supreme Court and CGPJ in Spain’s history. He emphasized that “equality is a backbone of democracy” and declared that Spain has now “recovered institutional normality.”
Perello, who has been a judge since 1985 and hails from Catalonia, is set to be sworn in on Wednesday.
