The recent ‘Mari Luz’ case highlighted deficiencies in the Spanish judicial system and a new report by the governing body of the judiciary, the CGJP, suggests there are 270,000 criminal cases pending.
The man accused of the murder of 5 year old Mari Luz Cortes, Santiago del Valle, should actually have been in prison since 2006 following a prior conviction for abusing his own daughter. However, a two year delay by a court in Sevilla in issuing the ‘search and detain’ order meant that he was still roaming free.
There are almost 270,000 judgements yet to be implemented, 70% relating to the Criminal Court and 30% to the Special Court. The number of cases relating to minor infractions of the law involving the payment of fines is said to be ‘incalculable’ and hundreds of thousands of people are still awaiting compensation payments.
The whole judicial system seems to be on the brink of collapse as the backlog of cases increases daily and this has prompted a parliamentary debate to be scheduled for today. The authorities are looking at various short and medium term solutions, possible drastic, to ease the situation.
The worst affected area is Cataluña, where 56,000 sentences have not yet been carried out, followed by Valencia with 40,000 and Madrid with 37,500.