The magistrates Gloria Poyatos Matas and Inmaculada Rodríguez Falcón have been appointed presidents of the Social and Contentious-Administrative Chambers of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, both based in Las Palmas.
Likewise, the Plenary of the General Council of the Judiciary agreed this Wednesday unanimously to elect magistrates Ignacio Sancho Gargallo and Concepción Rosario Ureste García as presidents of the First and Fourth Chambers of the Supreme Court, respectively.
The governing body of the judges has also resolved to appoint, also unanimously, the magistrate of the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra, Juan Manuel Fernández Martínez, as president of the National Court.
In total, the Plenary has made a total of 30 appointments in its session this Wednesday, of which fourteen have been for female candidates, including those corresponding to the presidencies of three Superior Courts of Justice and as many Provincial Courts.
In addition, the general auditor María Begoña Aramendía Rodríguez de Austria has been elected president of the Central Military Court and will be the first woman to head this body with jurisdiction throughout the national territory. The appointments made are as follows:
Supreme Court
Ignacio Sancho Gargallo, president of the First Chamber, holds a degree in Law from the University of Zaragoza and a doctorate in Law from the Pompeu Fabra University. He joined the judicial career in 1989, exercising jurisdictional functions in the Courts of Alcañiz and Barcelona. A commercial specialist magistrate of the first promotion, in 2005 he was appointed president of section 15 of the Provincial Court of Barcelona, a destination in which he remained until his incorporation in February 2012 to the Supreme Court, of whose Governing Chamber he has been a part since 2019. He has been a member of the Spanish Judicial Network of International Legal Cooperation (RJUE) (1998-2012) and of the Network of Experts in EU Law of the CGPJ (REDUE9, in the area of Competition Law, Intellectual, Industrial and Commercial Property. He was an elected member and president of the Judicial Ethics Commission from its constitution in May 2018 until his mandate expired in September 2020 and was re-elected as a member of the Commission in July 2024.
Concepción Ureste, president of the Fourth Chamber, has been a magistrate of the Supreme Court since 2019. She served as a substitute judge in Madrid and Valencia between 1986 and 1989, and the following year she joined the Judicial Career through competitive examination, having her first destination in Rota.
A specialist in the social jurisdictional order since 1993, that year she joined the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León based in Burgos as a magistrate, where she remained until 1995, when she was assigned to the Social Chamber of the TSJ of the Valencian Community. Two years later, she joined the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid as a magistrate and also spent four years - between 2004 and 2008 - in the Social Chamber of the National Court.
Ureste has teaching experience as an associate professor of Labor Law and Social Security at the Complutense University of Madrid; she has participated in collective publications such as “The Regulatory Law of Social Jurisdiction and Jurisprudence” or “Statute of Workers and Jurisprudence”; and has participated as a speaker in numerous seminars, courses and conferences.
The Plenary has agreed, on the other hand, to remove from the agenda the points related to the provision of the presidencies of the Second and Third Chambers of the high court.
National Court Juan Manuel Fernández, president of the National Court, holds a degree in Law from the University of Navarra, joined the Judicial Career in 1984 and had his first destination in Betanzos, to then serve in judicial bodies in Pamplona, Estella and Málaga.
In 1996 he joined the Provincial Court of Navarra as a magistrate, where he remained until his appointment as president of the Superior Court of Justice of the Foral Community in 2004.
In 2013 he was appointed member of the General Council of the Judiciary, a position he held until July 2024, during which time he served as president of the Justice and Disability Forum. After the renewal of the governing body of the judges, he rejoined the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra as a magistrate of the Civil and Criminal Chamber.
In addition, the Plenary of the CGPJ has made the following appointments in the National Court:
Presidency of the Appeals Chamber - Manuela Francisca Fernández Prado Presidency of the Criminal Chamber - Félix Alfonso Guevara Marcos
Presidency of the Social Chamber - Ramón Gallo Llanos Presidency of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber - Fernando Luis Ruiz Piñeiro
Superior Courts of Justice
The Plenary of the CGPJ has appointed the heads of four presidencies of Superior Courts of Justice, of which three are women, who will head these judicial bodies in Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha and Catalonia. Currently, only one presidency of TSJ, that of Extremadura, was occupied by a magistrate.