The General Council of the Judiciary has urgently proposed creating five new courts for the province of Alicante within the current year. This request appears in a report prepared by the Inspection Service, which outlines the number of additional judicial units deemed essential to ensure an optimal court system and safeguard the protection of citizens’ rights. Across Spain, a total of 123 new units are recommended, with eleven allocated to the Community of Valencia, divided between the Valencia and Alicante regions. The majority of these proposed units pertain to Civil and Social matters, driven by an overloaded workload that affects timely justice.
The requested courts are as follows: three judge positions in the Provincial Court of Valencia for criminal matters; two First Instance Courts in the Alicante judicial district; one First Instance Court in the Elche district; one First Instance Court in the Valencia district intended for later specialization in internments and incapacity cases; one First Instance and Instruction Court in the Elda district; one First Instance and Instruction Court in the Requena district (Valencia); one Social Court in Alicante and another Social Court in Valencia.
The document will be sent to the Governing Chambers of the Valencia Provincial Court and the Superior Courts of Justice so they may provide any observations they consider appropriate. It will also be forwarded to the Ministry of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, as legally the Government leads the policy for creating new judicial units and judge placements by territorial area.
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The report was prepared using the average workloads of all judicial bodies for 2022 and 2023, following the criteria set by the CGPJ. It considers factors such as case resolution rates, average pending cases per judicial district, the existence of reinforcement measures, and previously requested increases in staffing levels.
The Inspection Service study identifies the expansion of the court staff as essential for districts that have significantly exceeded workload indicators, notably those surpassing 130 percent. It also marks as a priority those districts where entry levels exceeded 175 percent in 2023, signaling a critical overload that demands prompt action.
In this context, the analysis underscores the need to strengthen judicial capacity in the most overloaded districts to restore balance between demand and available resources, ensuring citizens can access timely and fair justice even in high-pressure periods.