The ancient Greeks called it isonomy: equality before the law. Article 14 of the Spanish Constitution proclaims it, yet reality contradicts it every day. Mass immunities, unlawful rulings nobody corrects and a judiciary that judges itself have created an untouchable caste. If ordinary citizens are bound by the law, why are those who apply it not?
Equality proclaimed, not practised
Spain defines itself as a social and democratic State governed by the rule of law, and Article 14 of the Constitution declares all Spaniards equal before the law. On paper, isonomy is one of the pillars of the system. In practice, it is systematically eroded by two mutually reinforcing phenomena: aforamiento, the special jurisdictional privilege enjoyed by certain office-holders, and a corporatist judicial culture that has turned part of the judiciary into an estate beyond scrutiny.
Far from acting as a democratic safeguard, the current institutional design has allowed unlawful judicial decisions, for more than four decades, to go unpunished and unchallengeable, trampling on citizens' rights with no possibility of effective redress.
Special jurisdiction: a medieval privilege in a democracy
Spain is one of the countries in its region with the largest number of office-holders entitled to special jurisdiction. According to widely circulated estimates, the figure would be around 250,000 people if members of the security forces who enjoy a special forum are added to politicians, judges and prosecutors. For judges and magistrates, this privilege means that if they are investigated for an offence, they are not tried by an ordinary court but by higher courts made up of members of their own profession.
This design creates a structural inequality. Ordinary citizens do not enjoy the same margin of understanding, and proceedings against judges are frequently denounced as opaque, protracted or closed with barely any investigation. This feeds a selective impunity that flatly contradicts the principle of isonomy: when the judge's judge is a colleague, the suspicion of corporatism is inevitable.
Rulings contra legem and the helplessness of citizens
One of the most corrosive effects of this architecture is the lack of effective control over arbitrary judicial decisions. If a judge issues a ruling clearly contrary to the law, whether through ignorance, negligence or alleged bad faith, the person affected often lacks any real tools to challenge it:
- Many decisions cannot be appealed, or appeals are decided by bodies that share the same corporatist spirit.
- Criminal complaints against judges for perverting the course of justice rarely get past the admission stage.
- The vast majority of constitutional complaints (recursos de amparo) are declared inadmissible.
- The European Court of Human Rights is a useful route, but a distant and slow one, available only to those who can hold out for years.
The result is a doctrine of practical infallibility that shields the judiciary from its own mistakes. Those without financial means or specialist advice are simply left defenceless.
The deification of the judge
In this context, a deeply undemocratic phenomenon has taken root: the deification of the judge. The idea has spread that judges, by virtue of their office alone, stand beyond good and evil, as if they exercised a priesthood rather than a public function subject to accountability. It is a dangerous view. Judges are neither infallible nor neutral by nature, and their work must be open to institutional and public scrutiny.
Where judges answer to no one, citizens cease to be holders of rights and become subjects of other people's will.
The uncomfortable question is unavoidable: what would happen if those who must guarantee legality evaded their own obligations, tax obligations for instance? If the guardians of the system could build up wealth in the shadows, beyond all control, the very idea of justice would be hollowed out. It would not merely be an institutional crisis but a moral collapse of the rule of law. That is why asset transparency for senior judicial office-holders is not an attack on their independence but a condition of their legitimacy.
A necessary refoundation
Spain needs a profound reform that restores isonomy as the backbone of justice. We propose:
- Abolishing or drastically reducing special jurisdiction, starting with that of judges.
- Creating effective mechanisms of oversight and of disciplinary, civil and criminal liability for judges and magistrates, handled transparently.
- Requiring public, verifiable asset declarations from senior judicial office-holders.
- Opening the justice system to a democratic culture of accountability.
Justice cannot remain a closed, inaccessible fortress. If ordinary citizens are subject to the law, so must judges be. Demanding this is not an attack on justice but a defence of it. And that demand, sustained and organised, is the only way to restore trust in our institutions.