The judicial district of Arrecife went from 2019 to 2026 from sixteen courts to nineteen judicial positions, absorbed a 16% increase in case intake, completely reorganized its distribution rules, operational dynamics, and substitution regime, and executed the relocation of the entire headquarters in a single weekend to implement the new Court of Instance. In the same period, services created in Lanzarote ended up being adopted off the island: the templates for resolutions in understandable language that any judicial body in the Canary Islands can now use, and the social information service that is already operating in the judicial districts of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Telde, and Arucas.
This is the balance sheet included in the management report that the president of the Court of Instance of Arrecife, Adalberto de la Cruz Correa, made public this Tuesday, days before ceasing his position due to a transfer competition. The 31-page document is disseminated in its entirety to institutions, legal operators, and the media, and details the activity developed since the Deanship of the Judicial District and, since December 2025, from the Presidency of the new Court of Instance.
The report opens with a farewell and thank you letter and continues with ten thematic blocks, from the judicial staff to institutional relations. Its full publication responds to the way of understanding the position that has guided the mandate: transparency, understood as communicating every step and every result, leaving written record of every procedure, and reporting periodically. The document itself is presented as the last of these accountability reports.
The report places method ahead of results. Management has been supported since 2019 by four criteria—cooperation, coordination, communication, and transparency—and by a fifth criterion: that the distribution of public resources in justice matters should address the insular reality.
From there came the less visible work of the mandate, to which the document dedicates its own block: a stable regime of Boards of Judges from which the Deanery's work program was derived, communication channels in all jurisdictional orders, a welcome email that delivers all the party's documentation to each judge who joins, and an electronic administrative file system of its own making that kept a digitized record of all procedures, with notification of agreements and practically daily reporting to the judicial districts.
Along the same lines, the distribution rules for all jurisdictional orders were merged into single texts, which until then were scattered in successive agreements, and the instruction distribution system was replaced by a random one, with two results that the document describes as verifiable: better functioning of the on-call service and the practical disappearance of administrative appeals regarding distribution, which previously had to be resolved in considerable numbers each week. Annual substitution plans were also regularized, and a specific solution, previously non-existent, was designed for substitutions between positions in the same district with headquarters on different islands.
The letter explains why that part occupies the place it does: "I insist on the order because it is what is least seen, what involves the most work, and what sustains everything: none of the previous initiatives would have been possible in a disordered judicial district. Resources do not arrive here on their own," explains the magistrate.
The judicial district went from sixteen courts in 2019 to nineteen judicial positions integrated into the Court of Instance. During the period, the sixth civil court became operational, a dedicated section for violence against women was created with a new judicial position, and the seventh civil court was approved, scheduled for November 2027. Also with favorable reports from the Board of Judges and the Governing Council of the TSJC are the fifth instruction position, aimed at specialization in violence against children and adolescents, and the fifth social court - the third based in Arrecife -.
All this in a context of sustained growth: between 2019 and 2025, the intake of cases increased by 16%, to 33,393. On that data is based the criterion that the document defends regarding the distribution of public resources: "The residents of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, and those of every corner of our islands, have exactly the same right to a justice system that is close, agile, accessible, comprehensive, and well-resourced, even if guaranteeing it requires double or triple the effort from those of us who have that responsibility," the jurist details.
The judicial headquarters during the pandemic
The report dedicates a specific section to the health crisis that began in 2020, when the judicial headquarters had to continue providing services that could not be suspended. The Deanery coordinated daily with the Government of the Canary Islands, the Board of Judges, the Superior Court of Justice, the Prosecutor's Office, the Provincial Coordination Secretariat, the Institute of Legal Medicine, and all the building's personnel, including cleaning, security, and maintenance, on the application of approved protocols.
Among the measures adopted are the provision of technical means for telematic connections at the Civil Guard and National Police posts, managed together with the Bar Association of Lanzarote until the Government of the Canary Islands provided the corporate system; a protocolized counter for the distribution of protective material with control of the destination of each unit; and the adaptation of the headquarters with its own signage, partitions, air quality control systems, and filtering equipment. The document emphasizes that services could be provided in safe conditions for both those who work in the building and those who came to it.
A headquarters moved in a weekend
The report documents the most profound organizational transformation of the period: the implementation of the Court of Instance, with Lanzarote and La Graciosa included in the third phase of Organic Law 1/2025. After a planning phase initiated in mid-2025 with constant meetings between the General Directorate, the Presidency, the Provincial Coordination Secretariat, and the Directorates of common services, the complete physical transfer of workstations, furniture, and files was executed in a single weekend, and the common services were activated on March 23, 2026.
To facilitate the orientation of users and professionals, all spaces in the building were alphanumerically coded, a color-coded signage system was designed, and a visual guide and an explanatory video were disseminated via QR codes, with prior distribution to professional associations and security forces. The document also includes the one hundred percent implementation of the telematic referral of reports and the identification parade management service launched together with the Penitentiary Surveillance Courts of Las Palmas and the Penitentiary Center, which allows offenders sentenced to community service to count their availability as a day of compliance.
Attention to vulnerable people
The most extensive section of the document is dedicated to citizen attention and to people in vulnerable situations, the initiative that received the Award for Quality of Justice from the General Council of the Judiciary in the category of experience for achieving a more accessible Justice system.
From that work, the guide for comprehensive care for people with disabilities —approved by the General Board of Judges and the Governing Council of the TSJC, and supported by the Government of the Canary Islands— was born, as was the in-person social information service provided by the Fundación Canaria de Apoyos ADEPSI with funding from the Cabildo de Lanzarote, the easy-to-read service from Plena Inclusión Canarias, and a training plan aimed first at judicial staff and then at security forces, lawyers, and citizens.
In matters of childhood, a good practice guide approved in 2021 regulates the use of the Gesell Room and the minors' waiting room, with protocols that avoid visual confrontation and secondary victimization. In family matters, the Deanery collaborated in the launch of Lanzarote's first public and free Family Meeting Point and reactivated the judicial referral mediation service. In mental health, a protocol for urgent hospitalizations was agreed upon with the Doctor José Molina Orosa Hospital.
The letter explains what all this translates to for those who go to the judicial headquarters: "Behind every administrative file and protocol there is a person whose situation is decided with the necessary and best means. Behind an adapted waiting room there is a child waiting their turn in a suitable environment and without crossing paths with the person who harmed them. Behind a resolution in understandable language there is someone who finally understands what a court has decided about their own life," says Adalberto de la Cruz.
Teamwork
The first pages of the document are not a report, but a letter. In it, the author acknowledges that he did not always get it right—"there were decisions I would make differently today, procedures that I should have raised earlier or explained better"—and apologizes to anyone who may have felt neglected, before dedicating several pages to thanking the work of judges, the Prosecutor's Office, court clerks, officials working at the judicial headquarters, the Legal Medicine Institute, IT, maintenance, security, and cleaning staff, the Government of the Canary Islands, the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the city councils, the professional associations, the Security Forces and Corps, and third-sector entities.
"They were made by a team that decided things could work better and set about doing it, in a judicial headquarters where every morning someone is opening doors, registering documents, attending a counter, fixing a breakdown, holding trials, or preparing a courtroom. That team exists in Arrecife and will continue here, which is the only guarantee that really matters."
"An island that has been, and always will be, my home"
De la Cruz Correa arrived in Arrecife in April 2016 as the head of the Court of First Instance number 2. The Board of Judges elected him Dean in January 2019 and re-elected him in March 2023. He now steps down through a competitive selection process: he is transferring to position number 2 of the family, children, and capacity section of the Court of Instance of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and continues as a member of the Governing Council of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands.
"I bid farewell with the humble hope of having contributed, to the best of my ability, as the last Dean and first President of this Court, to the improvement of the judicial district and of Justice on this island, an island that has been, and always will be, my home," concludes the magistrate.
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