"Privilege can only be understood as honour and as service to others." So said Spain's Head of State in April 2023, and it is hard to disagree. Yet those words grate in a country where judges and prosecutors have kept, for four decades, a procedural jurisdiction of their own that contradicts the constitutional principle of equality before the law.
A speech that invites reflection
On 19 April 2023, in Ronda (Málaga), to mark the 450th anniversary of its Royal Cavalry Guild, the King addressed Spain's five Royal Maestranzas. He called for a spirit of renewal in keeping with constitutional principles, with merit as the benchmark and the pursuit of excellence, and recalled that lineage and history entail, above all, obligation and commitment. It is a message any democrat can share.
That is precisely why it should be applied beyond the noble corporations. If privilege is justified only as service, what are we to say of privileges that serve nobody but those who enjoy them?
Procedural privileges: privilege without service
Since the 1985 Organic Law of the Judiciary, judges and prosecutors can only be investigated and tried by higher courts made up of their own career colleagues. This is neither an honour nor a service to society: it is procedural protection from the ordinary justice that applies to every other citizen.
Article 14 of the Constitution states that Spaniards are equal before the law, without discrimination on account of any personal or social condition or circumstance. No human being, however high their office, deserves different treatment before the law. And yet the privilege survives because those who could challenge it are precisely those who benefit from it.
An obligation nobody exercises
Article 35.1 of the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court provides that, where a judge or court considers that a statutory provision applicable to the case, on whose validity the ruling depends, may be contrary to the Constitution, it shall refer the question to the Constitutional Court. To date, as far as we know, no judge has done so with the rules governing their own privileged status.
In addition, complaints have been lodged alleging that senior judges hold funds in tax havens, with no record of any institution acting of its own motion to clarify them. We do not prejudge their merits, but we do denounce the institutional silence: a branch of power that refuses to examine itself feeds suspicion.
Our proposal: rewarding the defence of the rule of law
ACCYDED has written to the Royal Household and to the Princess of Asturias Foundation proposing that its awards include a new category: Defence of the Rule of Law. The idea is simple: to publicly recognise those who risk their careers or their peace of mind to defend equality before the law.
It would also be a litmus test. We would like one day to see a judge honoured for having challenged, through Article 35.1 of the Organic Law of the Constitutional Court, the privilege enjoyed by their own profession. Such a gesture would prove that privilege can indeed be understood as service.
A privilege that does not serve others is no honour: it is an outstanding debt to equality.
What we demand
- The abolition of the procedural privileges of judges and prosecutors, and a review of all the others.
- That courts refer questions of constitutionality whenever the privilege clashes with Article 14.
- Transparent investigation, of their own motion, of complaints concerning senior judicial office-holders.
- Public recognition for those who defend the rule of law, including within the judiciary.
The words spoken in Ronda set a standard. It is up to citizens to demand that it be applied to every institution, starting with the one that dispenses justice. Support our initiative and help us turn equality before the law into an everyday reality.