A SPANISH judge has withdrawn his candidacy as president of Spain’s Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), before he is formally appointed.

Manuel Marchena’s decision was triggered by the controversy surrounding the People’s Party (PP) allegedly controlling from “behind the scenes” the trials against Catalan leaders for their role in the October 2017 independence referendum.

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It followed a leaked WhatsApp message on Monday – as The National revealed yesterday – from PP spokesperson in the Spanish Senate, Ignacio Cosidó, who boasted to colleagues that the party had secured influence over the court’s criminal chamber which will hear the indyref – known as 1-O – cases.

Earlier this month conservative Marchena was named as president of the CGPJ, which would have barred him from judging these trials. Now, after his withdrawal, he will still be able to oversee them.

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In a letter released yesterday, Marchena said he had never seen the judiciary as a political option to solving a criminal process.

“My career as a magistrate has always been presided over by independence as a legitimacy… of any jurisdictional decision” he said.

“I have never conceived the exercise of the jurisdictional function as an instrument at the service of one or another political option to control the outcome of a criminal proceeding.

“The examination of the resolutions that I have dictated during these years as Supreme Court magistrate… is the best sign that I have never acted or conditioned the application of the right to the political option of the defendant or denounced.”

Marchena’s decision widens the split between the PP and the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists (PSOE) following the deal exposed by Cosidó’s messages to carve up the CGPJ membership, effectively giving them political control of the judiciary. Each side has blamed the other, with the PP signalling that it wanted to break the agreement, while the PSOE said it wanted a “sense of state”.

In another development, defendants in the 1-O trials have challenged Marchena’s position in the court that will try them.

Jailed former ministers Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Josep Rull, Jordi Turull, along with grassroots activists Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, yesterday wrote to the Supreme Court urging it to recuse the judge.

In a letter, lawyer Andreu van den Eynde questioned Marchena’s impartiality, citing the “political agreement” between the PSOE and PP. He said Marchena was “the protagonist of this pact to control the judiciary, and he is attributed personal characteristics linked to a determined political orientation that doubt the impartiality for participation in the process which concerns us”.