This week began with two separate surveys, published in El País and La Vanguardia, which pointed in the same direction: the loss of confidence in the judicial system and the public’s perception of certain political cases, such as those surrounding the family of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, or the partner of the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
The portrait of the present drawn by both the work of 40dB and that of Ipsos aligns with what the data have shown over the past decades. Spain remains persistently at low or mid-low levels of trust in the judicial system, almost always below the European average according to the European Social Survey (ESS). Therefore, distrust is not a novelty.
“Spain remains persistently at low or mid-low levels of trust in the judicial system, almost always below the European average”
Nevertheless, the current climate pushes one to think that there is an intensification of distrust that has its origin (or is channeled) through politics. Today, justice is perceived as an institution less independent and increasingly embedded in party-conflict as yet another actor.
In the first ESS wave, corresponding to 2002/03, Spain recorded an average trust level of 4.29 out of 10 in the judicial system, compared with the European average of 5.26 available. The gap narrowed in some periods, such as 2006/07, but widened again after the financial crisis and the subsequent political cycle. In 2012/13, Spain fell to 3.71, one point below the available European average; in 2016/17, it stood at 3.92 versus 5.26 European. The latest wave, 2023/24, shows a significant improvement: Spain reaches 5.21, now very close to the 5.37 of the available average. In other words, for much of the 21st century, Spanish judicial trust has started from a low baseline.
That trajectory requires taking a step back from the current moment.
The cases affecting Pedro Sánchez, his circle, the PP or other political actors may have increased the public visibility of justice, but they do not, by themselves, explain the level of trust with which Spain starts. Before those cases there was already an accumulated perception of slow justice, difficult to understand, not easily accessible, and with perceived independence problems. In this sense, it is worth recalling that a large portion of the public does not only debate a single verdict, but the system’s capacity to treat everyone equally, applying the law impartially and resisting political or economic pressures.
“Before those cases there was already an accumulated perception of slow justice, difficult to understand, not easily accessible, and with perceived independence problems”
Does this mean ideology plays no role? Quite the opposite. The data show that trust in justice is not distributed evenly along the ideological spectrum. In Spain, those on the right tend to trust justice more than those on the left, especially since 2012. The gap is not constant, but persistent in recent years.
That pattern does not turn justice into a simple reflection of the government in power. If it were enough to look at who governs, the lines would swing mechanically with each turnover. One must consider the ideological stance, but also the perception of independence, the political climate of the moment and the judicial developments under discussion at that moment. Comparative research on trust in the courts has shown that there is also a gap between winners and losers of politics in the judicial realm, though smaller than in openly political institutions such as the Government or Parliament. The difference is that the courts are not seen exactly as another arena of partisan competition, but they are not isolated from it either.
Judicial trust combines an assessment of how the courts operate—whether they are effective, accessible, independent, or capable of resolving disputes with guarantees—with a more instrumental reading: whether their decisions favor or harm “one’s own side.” Argentina provides a good example to understand this dynamic. In 2013, Cristina Fernández’s government pushed through a reform of the Council of the Magistracy that it defended as a democratization of justice. The opposition, in turn, saw it as an attempt to control the judiciary. Congress approved the reform, but first a federal court and then the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. The dispute received wide media coverage and produced two opposing readings: for the government, judges were meddling in politics; for the opposition, they had protected judicial independence.
This case has been studied to see what happens when courts intervene in politically very visible conflicts. The data showed that trust in justice fell among government supporters after the judicial decisions, while it rose among opposition supporters, especially after the intervention of the Supreme Court.
That is why recent judicial cases have such a capacity to “taint” the general perception of the system. Most people do not keep track in detail of every instruction, every appeal, or every order —even though the media make efforts, with varying success, to cover them. They receive the broad strokes of each case: who is investigated, who accuses, the level of coverage of the case and, above all, what each party says and where it positions itself. High-profile cases do not only affect opinions about a particular judge, prosecutor, or court; they can alter the image of “justice” as a general institution.
“Recent judicial cases have a great capacity to contaminate the general perception of the system”
Turning to the European comparison again, it places Spain in a specific group: countries where the relationship between ideology and trust in justice is conservative. That is, the further to the right a person places themselves, the more trust they report in justice. In the latest ESS wave, the Spanish slope is 0.122 points of trust for each point to the right on the ideological scale. It is lower than in Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania, Cyprus or Slovakia, where the slope is more pronounced, but higher than in countries where the relationship is nearly zero or even negative, such as Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, France or Sweden.
The chart not only shows whether a country trusts its justice more or less, but toward which side this trust leans. In some countries, the right trusts more; in others, the left or the progressive center shows equal or higher levels. Spain appears in the first block. Does this allow us to claim that justice is conservative? Not really. Nor can one infer from this that judicial decisions respond to a party political logic. It does indicate, however, that the public does not perceive the institution from a neutral angle: trust is socially ordered and politically filtered.
“In some countries, the right trusts more; in others, the left or the progressive center show equal or higher levels. Spain appears in the first block”
In 2025, only 39% of Spaniards consider the independence of judges and courts to be “very good” or “quite good”, compared with 54% of the EU average. Spain falls behind France, Italy, Portugal and the EU average, and comes closer to the group of countries where perceptions of interference or pressures are more worrying. Here we use data from the EU Justice Scoreboard which, like the ESS, relies on public perception rather than objective indicators. Although perception is precisely what matters most here, since it has political effects: the legitimacy of the courts also depends on their decisions being seen as something other than an extension of the conflict between parties.
If trust begins to depend on the type of case, the party affected or the outcome of the ruling, the judicial system will face major challenges. Justice can generate disagreements about concrete decisions, even intense disagreements, without losing a common ground of legitimacy. Yet, in contexts of high polarization and politicization around judicial cases, it becomes harder to rebuild shared trust.
“If trust starts to depend on the type of case, the party affected or the outcome of the ruling, the judicial system will face major challenges”
Comparative evidence suggests that the independence that reduces the political gap is not only that which is written in rules, but the one the public perceives in the courts’ behavior and in the restraint shown by political actors. Reforming procedures can help, but perhaps it is easier and more immediate to stop turning every judicial decision into party ammunition.
Justice is not viewed simply as another party, another Government or another Parliament. Yet it is increasingly difficult to maintain that it remains outside the political struggle. Therefore, the objective the institution should pursue, and that political actors should support, is none other than to improve that trust by distancing partisan politics from it.
