The Constitutional Court has rejected by six votes to four the pleasure resources presented by the PP and 11 of the autonomous communities in which it governs against the acceptance of those of the conservative sector of the Court. This decision involves the confirmation of the order issued by the Guarantee Body on January 29, which took said magistrate of all the resources filed against the Amnesty Law “for the institutional, political and social normalization of Catalonia.”
The votes against this resolution are those of the four components of the Court that, together with, make up the Constitutional Constitutional Sector, Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel, Ricardo Enriquez and César Tolosa.
The project of sentence on Amnesty’s law is practically finalized and the Constitutional provides that the proposal be debated in the plenary next June. The texts that have served as the basis for the presentation have been prepared by a group of lawyers of the Guarantees Organ directed by the Vice President of the Court, Immaculate Montalbán. At the doors of the deliberation, they have asked in writing to their president, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, that the Constitutional suspends the procedures of the sentence until the European Justice resolves the preliments raised on the alleged incompatibility between said norm and European law. They also contemplate the possibility that the guarantees body itself goes to the Court of Justice of the European Union (TJUE) if it also houses doubts about that compatibility. These initiatives will be discussed when the first plenary session on the PP appeal against the Amnesty Law, next June.
Regarding the challenges against Macías, this magistrate was set out from the deliberation and failures on the amnesty law for reasons that the Constitutional considered and continues to estimate objective, and that they consist of the fact that he pronounced sharply against the constitutionality of said norm when he was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary.
Prior to this challenge, the Court registered the decline of the magistrate and former Minister of Justice Juan Carlos Campo, who at the stage in the government also manifested himself against the constitutional lace of forgiveness to the leaders of the Process. Campo expressed this criterion in the reports in which the government supported to grant the pardon to the independence leaders. As the head of Justice, the today member of the Guarantees Body considered that the amnesty is unconstitutional.
The decision to separate Macías from all resources against forgiveness to the leaders of the process –Already all involved in crimes related to said initiative— and the previous acceptance of field abstention assumes that the court that will resolve whether the amnesty law is or not constitutional retains its progressive majority. With all its members in the Plenary, the Constitutional has seven magistrates of this sector, for five of the conservative block. The loss of a member of each of these groups leaves the Guarantees body with ten members, six of which integrate the progressive wing, and four conservative. So far, it has happened very frequently that both groups act very cohesive in all matters of special political relevance.
In fact, the PP plea resources and 11 of its autonomous communities against the car that separated Macías from the sentences on the amnesty law keep relevant similarities with the objections exposed on this issue by the magistrates of the Conservative Block of the Court. These components of the court stated that the exclusion of Macías of all the challenges received against the amnesty law had been carried out causing their “helplessness” and that of the communities governed by the popular ones, since all of them have questioned said rule without asking to be departed from the deliberations. This was reasoned in the discrepant votes of the order by which the court decided last January – also by six votes to four – that the acceptance of a first challenge against Macías, agreed on the 15th of the same month, had to be extended extended to all the challenges presented, thesis that has now thrown again when the latest resources is rejected. The conservative block, on the other hand, understood that the “automatic” extension of the effects of the challenge to all the challenges presented against said law violates the rights of the challenged.
Both the challenge of José Mario Macías and the abstention of Juan Carlos have the common denominator of their previous manifestations against the constitutionality of said law, with the difference that the first has been separated after being challenged and the second was excluded by their own decision. The particular discrepant votes objected in this regard that the opinions of a magistrate can imply their exclusion when debated on the subject for which he has expressed his criteria. Specifically, magistrate Enrique Arnaldo said in his text that “the challenge of a magistrate for the mere fact of having an early legal criticism on the matters that must resolve, since the knowledge of the law is precisely the budget to exercise the jurisdictional function with freedom of criteria and in a founded manner” cannot be intended. “
