Rafael Fernández Valverde

Rafael Fernández Valverde served as a Judge, with a distinguished professional career devoted to the Spanish judiciary, carrying out much of his judicial work between Madrid and the Canary Islands. From 2003 until 2022, he served as a Justice of the Supreme Court, following his tenure at the National High Court (Audiencia Nacional) and as President of the Administrative Chamber of the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands, based in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Within the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, he chaired the Urban Planning and Environment Section. He is also the only Spanish judge to have served on the General Council of the Judiciary on two separate occasions (1996–2001 and 2013–2022), having been appointed respectively by the Senate and the Congress of Deputies. 
He has taught Administrative Law and Constitutional Law at the Universities of La Laguna and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as at the Madrid-based universities Carlos III, Complutense and CUNEF University, where he currently serves as an adjunct professor. He has also lectured on Master's programmes—primarily in the fields of urban planning, environmental law and access to the legal profession—at these universities and at other public and private institutions.

He has undertaken international collaborative placements at the French Council of State, the Belgian Council of State, the Italian Court of Cassation, the Supreme Court of Peru and the Environmental Court of Santiago, Chile. He has also visited on numerous occasions the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.

Following his retirement from judicial office with emeritus status, he joined the law firm Montero-Aramburu & Gómez-Villares Atencia as Counsel. He is the author of more than seventy individual and collective publications, mainly in the field of Administrative Law, has delivered countless lectures in Spain and abroad, and has participated in numerous conferences, congresses and seminars. His most recent publication is the book Judicial Urban Planning: Case Law for the City of the Future.