The reductions in sentences for hundreds of sexual offenders —including releases— after the entry into force of the ‘only yes is yes’ law have plunged the Government into one of its worst crises at a critical moment, just a few months before the appointment election next May. The matter, very delicate, has become one of the axes of the opposition work of the Popular Party, whose leaders have come to accuse the Executive of not protecting women. In this strategy, Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party has found allies in the expired General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).
Members of the body consulted by elDiario.es see a “coordinated action” between the PP and a group of members of the conservative sector with the aim of “wearing down” the Government through the loudspeaker that grants them their membership in the highest institution of the third state power. The sources consulted place in this group five of the 11 judges and jurists elected at the time at the proposal of the PP, to whom they attribute the leadership of an institutional clash strategy that has been manifested in their movements inside and outside the organ in recent months. These members are José Antonio Ballestero, Ángeles Carmona, Carmen Llombart, José María Macías and Gerardo Martínez Tristán, according to these sources.
It is the same group that led the blockade of the renewal of the Constitutional Court last autumn, delaying the change of majorities to a progressive one; that he sought a new clash with the Government as a result of the reform of the crime of sedition or that he has taken his criticisms of the Executive to Brussels for the limitation of making appointments with the mandate expired. His latest moves are related to the law of ‘only yes is yes’.

After the controversy over a meeting with MEPs in which the government was criticized “behind the backs” of the rest of the members, the latest episode that has raised tension in the CGPJ is the leak of provisional data on the revisions of sentences for sex offenders In application of this norm: a total of 701 lowered sentences, according to figures that are still provisional and that do not include how many times the judges have rejected these downward revisions.

The information was on the front pages of the media last Tuesday night, before it was made available to the members and when there was an express written order from the president, Rafael Mozo, that the data not be released until it was complete and classified, several sources agree. There is still no date for the official communication of these data, confirms a spokesman. The matter will be dealt with at the meeting this Thursday of the Permanent Commission, the main nucleus of power of the body.

The plenary session had unanimously agreed on February 9 to compile this information at the request of the conservative member Ángeles Carmona, who chairs the Observatory against Gender Violence, a body within the CGPJ itself in charge of addressing the treatment of this violence from the Administration of Justice. At that time, the media were doing their own counts, although with partial data because not all territorial courts provided the information. The matter is complex because there are several ways to apply the law of ‘only yes is yes’ to a sex offender. It can be done by a court when reviewing a final sentence -these are the figures that have been released so far-, but also if it is judging the case or if it is studying an ordinary appeal in a higher court or in the Supreme Court.

The members agreed then that it was pertinent to carry out a “detailed analysis of the incidents that have arisen in the application of the law and to be able to offer contrasted data in a transparent manner,” according to the body in a press release. The following week, on February 16, the Permanent Commission was scheduled to analyze a proposal by Carmona on measures aimed at “facilitating the collection and study” of this data. But the matter ended up being withdrawn from the agenda and was not dealt with again. Some members expressed that it was something that should be treated with caution, among other issues, due to the complexity involved in handling these resolutions in terms of data protection. No one escaped that this is highly sensitive information with great political impact.

But, by then, the technicians from the Observatory against Gender Violence had been compiling this data for more than two weeks because it had been agreed at a meeting held at the end of January to address another issue: the rebound in sexist murders at the end of 2022. The information, although partial, was already in the hands of various organ workers and on Tuesday night it was released to the media. A fact that generated deep discomfort in members of the minority progressive sector, who accuse the hard core of the conservatives of this