The game comes to an end. After weeks of campaigning, almost 76,000 lawyers from the Madrid Bar Association (ICAM) have the opportunity this Tuesday to elect their highest representative for the next five years. Seven applicants are running for the deanship. Whoever wins will lead an organization with more than 425 years of history; huge institutional relationships; an annual budget of more than 30 million euros; with more than 200 direct employees; and that it will receive four million in grants for the administration of free justice. Much power and influence is at stake. Also how to use them.
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“Here, people come to serve, not to serve themselves,” says the current dean, José María Alonso Puig, who sits in his office at ICAM headquarters, located in an old aristocratic mansion that In 1977 it was transformed into a bank – where the cameras are still armored – and where the professional institution arrived in 1986 after acquiring the building on the privileged Serrano street of the capital, in the heart of the Salamanca district. “It’s an honor to be here. Anyone who uses this for personal gain is cheating the professionals. This is not what this position is for,” emphasizes the lawyer specializing in civil procedural law with more than four decades of professional experience.
Alonso came into the position in 2017 after leading two of the country’s most prestigious law firms (Baker McKenzie and Garrigues) and now, five years later, he looks back with relative satisfaction: “The pandemic has been the great challenge we have faced This weather. We had to allocate one million euros to work with the recovery of the professionals most affected [que vieron reducidos sustancialmente sus ingresos]”, he emphasizes and is aware of the criticism he receives from some candidates for his successor: “It is very easy to always say that the dean is to blame.”
Alonso’s name joins a centuries-old list of deans that includes prominent figures in Spanish history, demonstrating its enormous social relevance. ICAM was led, among many others, by José Canalejas, the head of government at the beginning of the 20th century, shot dead in an attack in 1912; Manuel García Prieto, who succeeded him as President of the Council of Ministers after his death; or the also Minister Juan de la Cierva. They now want to join Eugenio Ribón, Raúl Ochoa, Juan Gonzalo Ospina, Ángeles Chinarro, Miguel Durán, Beatriz Saura and Begoña Trigo – and also Raisy C. Ventura, who presented her individual candidacy and not a list like the other seven – . The first three have been on the Alonso board for five years.
But why should a non-lawyer outside the legal community care about these elections? These 76,000 lawyers are the ones who represent citizens in their divorces, defend them when they are cheated, assist them in judicial declarations… In short, they are necessary for the people of Madrid in most of their contacts with the law. In addition, the body exerts great influence, although some candidates denounce that it is not exercised enough in favor of professionals. “The dean of 76,000 lawyers is represented enormously. You make the institutions listen to you, but that doesn’t mean you get everything you want,” Alonso defended.
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With so much power at stake, the campaign has at times heated up, with candidates accusing each other of having secret agendas. During the most recent ballot of attorneys, Acting Dean Sonia Gumpert denounced an attack on the hotel where the counting of votes takes place. Last Thursday, one of the applicants, Raúl Ochoa, left the seven-person debate organized by ICAM: “I left because not everything works. We have a campaign where the rest of the candidatures broke the law, they tried to soil them by removing dirty linen. This is not a political campaign, but that of a professional association. They have shown fear reaching Serrano, 9 [sede del Colegio]which I do not share”.
Sonia Gumpert, then acting dean, after she denounced an attack in the 2017 election. Claudio Alvarez
The position of Dean of the Bar Association is highly coveted, although according to the charter it is unpaid. Candidate Juan Gonzalo Ospina sums it up like this: “It’s a position that opens the door to the judiciary, gives you access to contact with the legislature and the executive, the ability to control an institution that reaches 76,000 jurists, and the Intentions that lead to wanting to choose all of this are not always noble. Candidate Ángela Chinarro, running with support from the progressive Free Association of Lawyers and Lawyers (ALA), goes even further: “The college is a great beach bar for people who know how to make a good income from the position. You leave office with an impressive list of contacts, it can even be a political stepping stone for certain individuals.”
The institution’s lack of transparency was on the lips of all candidates, including some members of the outgoing government executive. As an example, Chinarro cites one of the institution’s most notorious controversies, the contract with journalist Alfonso Merlos, who was fired in 2020 following a television scandal related to his personal life. “We’ve been asking for this contract since 2018, and it wasn’t released until all of this was out,” says Chinarro. According to ALA, the journalist received more than 120,000 a year for ICAM communication tasks through his company, in addition to another 30,000 euros in variables – the cost to the institution rose to 180,000 plus VAT – .
There are other examples, according to candidate Saura, who under the heading “Other” highlights a game for a million euros: “We’re talking about a million euros, I’m not saying that they have up to four coffees in detail budgets, but one Million I It seems that it is necessary to justify it more”.
“They have no interest in fighting”
Begoña Trigo accuses the current board of directors that the university “did not stand up for the interests of small and medium-sized companies”. “They weren’t interested in fighting with the administration,” confirms the candidate, adding: “ICAM is a very important civilian institution with a great convening capacity. But interests have gone the other way. Having institutional relations is always a point for the development of your company”. “The school has a flat encephalogram from the perspective of political, social, and institutional influence because, instead of putting their finger on the wound before the public powers-that-be, the deans are reassuring themselves to the state of lazy beings who don’t know they are don’t feel it, they don’t get noticed, they don’t go through,” complains Miguel Durán.
“You have to have leadership capacity to look at, for example, which courts are slow and why and look for solutions, we haven’t had the capacity to sway opinions on legislation, we haven’t raised our voice against the fact that it’s in In Spain there are four or five computer programs in the judiciary instead of just one…” Ospina lists.
Low turnout
Turnout is always disappointing. In the last elections it remained at 8%. The voting system is probably one of the reasons for this very low percentage, as several applicants agree. You cannot vote electronically, the deadline for postal votes was early November and there is only one place to cast your ballot: the Hotel Novotel Madrid Center, from 9am to 8pm. “Do you think that encourages participation? Is it good for a lawyer from Leganés to come to a hotel in central Madrid on a working day to cast a ballot?” asks Beatriz Saura. “Many lawyers from small and medium-sized law firms ask themselves: ‘Why am I voting if ICAM doesn’t take care of my interests afterwards?’ emphasizes Trigo.
“If it wasn’t compulsory to join a college to practice, 90% of the profession wouldn’t be part of the college,” says Miguel Durán: “It’s not a clean electoral process, it was dark, the electoral commission itself isn’t clean. They didn’t want participation to be able to manipulate the result in favor of a continuous candidacy: that of Ribón,” adds the former president of ONCE and Telecinco without half-heartedness, who was acquitted by the National Court in 2007, accused of tax crimes and untruth for his management at the top the chain –
Eugenio Ribón, who sits on Alonso’s board and inherits the current ICAM government, defends himself: “What does the school need? People with over-ambition who present their candidacy to further their business venture, people who present their candidacy as a political stepping stone. Or does it need a solvent candidacy with a good accredited management? In a press release, his team reported that he had met with PSOE and PP spokespersons in the Congressional Judiciary Commission last week: “This candidacy is the only one to have held meetings of significant institutional weight when it met with of the two major parties in the chambers that make up the legislature,” the statement said.
José María Alonso, outgoing Dean of ICAM, last Thursday at the ICAM headquarters JUAN BARBOSA
Chinarro, Saura and Trigo above all hoist the flag of equality in their candidacies. “Without nuances and without a surname,” emphasizes the first. “We are the only candidacy where two women are running for dean and vice-dean,” emphasizes Trigo. Meanwhile, Saura has denounced the shortage of women for the school’s final anniversary, despite the opinion of the institution’s own Equality Commission, which warned of the shortage. “After the photos of the tables and the presentations without women, no one resigned that we are 50% of the school”, Saura highlights one of the themes in which the campaign has played a leading role. The President of the ICAM Equality Commission, Ángela Cerrillos, blamed Ribón for this lack of female presence, to which she credited the organization of the anniversary. He dismissed the “unjustified attacks” and posted a photo of an “EQUAL” table [sic] that he – with three women and three men – was hosting, along with a statement adding that “the organizing committee consisted of four men and five women”.
“Now that there is so much talk about women’s equality, I have a lot of experience fighting discrimination because I have fought the suffering of people with disabilities. When I got a girlfriend, I noticed her parents’ rejection of their daughter marrying a blind man,” Miguel Durán also intervened.
The considerable resources invested by some candidates show the power at stake: several have hired press consultants, and Ospina’s team, for example, assured in mid-November that they had already spent €27,000 and the members of his list had contributed up to €45,000. But apart from the powerful gentleman Mr. Dinero, the last word will rest with the lawyers who go to the polls. Influencing the future of the largest bar association in Europe.
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