The Supreme Court begins this Thursday the deliberation of the appeals of PP, Vox and Ciudadanos against the pardons granted to the Catalan independence leaders two years ago, when the political tone rises due to the amnesty that Junts demands to sit down to negotiate the investiture of Pedro Sanchez.
The Fifth Section of the Administrative Litigation Chamber will begin with the pardons of the former Catalan deputy and former president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) Jordi Sànchez and the former president of Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Cuixart.
This first deliberation comes with the debate over the amnesty on the rise after the mobilization announced by the PP in Madrid to protest against the amnesty on September 24, on the eve of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s investiture session in Congress and after the Former President of the Government José María Aznar will urge a civic response from Spanish society in an event.
In fact, although the revocation of the pardons would mean the return to prison of those convicted by the process, their future would be waiting for what could happen with the amnesty demanded by the party of former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to negotiate with Sánchez and that It causes widespread discomfort in the Supreme Court, which has designed the entire legal architecture against the “procés.”
It was in June 2021 when the Sánchez Government granted partial pardons to the nine independence leaders sentenced by the Supreme Court to between 9 and 13 years in prison.
Since then, this issue has gone through different stages in the court, with the rectification of its position due to a change in the composition of the Chamber to the requests to resolve it in Plenary, and, in addition, it has been affected by political decisions such as the penal reform that repealed sedition and modified embezzlement.
Reviewing the history, one of the keys derives from the composition of the Room. In January 2022, the court rejected all the appeals by a slim majority of three to two, but four months later, the departure and entry of a judge altered the majorities and the court rectified its initial criterion by a single vote, when estimating the challenges from the parties against the initial ruling of the Supreme Court.
But it turns out that once again the Section has changed names. Now it is the conservatives Fernando Román and Wenceslao Olea facing the progressives Ángel Arozamena and Ángeles Huet, who are joined by magistrate Pablo Lucas, who presides over the Chamber as the former president of the Supreme Court Carlos Lesmes abstained.
The first thing that the Chamber will have to study is the lack of legitimization of the political parties that the State Attorney’s Office alleged, estimating that only those who prove to be directly harmed by the release of the prisoners can be.
At first, the Supreme Court followed the criteria of the Legal Profession, but when it rectified its position, it agreed to postpone this issue until the sentencing process. A possible rejection would put an end to the resources, without reaching the bottom line, legal sources explain to EFE. Otherwise, the magistrates must determine whether the reasons of public utility, which the Government justified in granting the pardons, complied with the law.
The challenges against the pardon measure have not been unrelated to political ups and downs and, in fact, a few months ago the Supreme Court shelved the appeals against the pardons granted to the former president of the Parliament Carme Forcadell and the former councilors Joaquim Forn and Josep Rull, having repealed the crime of sedition – the only one for which they were convicted – after the penal reform that had other consequences for those pardoned.
Such is the case of Sànchez and Cuixart, convicted of sedition for acts that, after the reform, the court included in the new crime of aggravated public disorder. In addition to the Jordis, the appeals that remain alive before the court affect former vice-president Oriol Junqueras and former councilors Raúl Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa.
