The dispute centers on the validity of the appointments of three commissioners of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Local Police, after the Supreme Court annulled their selection process in 2023. The Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber will rule on the request for an official review filed by Isidro Armas, head of the San Bartolomé de Tirajana Local Police.
The annulment of the process by the High Court was due to the three commissioner positions not being included in the public employment offer of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria City Council. Despite this ruling, the city council decided to annul only the bases of the 2014 selection procedure but maintained the appointments made in 2015, arguing that the commissioners acted in good faith.
The affected commissioners are Carmen Delia Martín Mederos, current head of the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Local Police; Rosa Rodríguez, general director of Security and Emergencies of the City Council; and José Luis de los Reyes, commissioner of the Canarian General Police Corps. At the time of their selection, they held the positions of deputy commissioner of Traffic, deputy commissioner of Districts and Beaches, and deputy commissioner of the Special Unit-GOIA and Transmissions, respectively.
Isidro Armas, who was excluded from the selection process in 2013, filed a request for an official review at the end of March 2024. He believes that maintaining the appointments is null and void by law and that the City Council lacked the authority to make such a decision, which, in his opinion, could only be made by the judicial authority. Given the lack of a municipal response, Armas has appealed to the courts to declare the administrative silence dismissal as non-compliant with the law.
“"The administration was not only incompetent to preserve the selection process and, with it, the appointments made, but should have assumed the effects of its supervening expulsion from the legal system, proceeded to agree to the cessation of the affected public employees, and allowed them, in case of disagreement, to present their preservation to the judicial authority, considering that, in their case, the doctrine of good faith approvals applies, thereby allowing an analysis of whether, in this specific case, the behavior of the candidates who finally passed the process was unrelated to the incorrect action."
The crux of the matter is that the Supreme Court's ruling did not address the effects of annulling the selection process bases on subsequent appointments. The City Council interpreted that, since the candidates had successfully completed the internal promotion with criteria of security, good faith, and equity, their right to promotion to commissioner positions should be respected.
