The president of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, has avoided assessing any aspect of the amnesty law before the delegation of the Venice Commission, a body dependent on the Council of Europe, which has landed in Spain these days to learn about the technical-legal aspects of a law that is still in full parliamentary debate pending approval.
The guarantee body received the delegation out of “institutional courtesy” although it explained to the Commission experts present at the meeting that the law they are asking about has not even been approved and therefore the TC cannot evaluate any of its aspects.
As the court stated in a statement at the end of the meeting, during the meeting, no question was raised regarding the content or processing of the Organic Law Proposal on the amnesty. The reason has been that Conde-Pumpido has explained that “he cannot, at the current time, make any statement on issues related to this matter since the law has not yet been approved by Parliament and there is no appeal against it.” Before the court”.
At the meeting, the president of the TC detailed the two processes that exist to question the constitutionality of a law. On the one hand, the appeal of unconstitutionality, whose legitimation corresponds, among others, to the President of the Government, the Ombudsman, fifty deputies and fifty senators. In this case, both the PP and Vox have already announced that they will go to the guarantee body once the law comes into force.
And on the other hand, the question of unconstitutionality, a procedure that can only be promoted by judges and courts when they consider that a norm with the rank of law applicable to the process of which they are aware and on whose validity the decision they have to adopt in it depends, can be contrary to the Constitution.
In the case of the amnesty, once the law is approved, it will be the judges who can go to the TC to raise the possible unconstitutionality of the amnesty. In this way, each judicial process that could be affected will be suspended until the body that defends the Magna Carta resolves it. This would prevent the effects of the amnesty from taking immediate effect. However, the law is still being processed by parliament.
It has not yet passed the Congress of Deputies phase after Junts voted against considering that the law is incomplete. There is still no exact date for voting again, but this will not happen before the Galician elections on February 18. It will then have to go through the Senate process, which could take two months, for its return to Congress, so before May there is no expectation that it could see the light of day.
This delegation of constitutional experts dependent on the Council of Europe as a consultative body, has come to Spain to inquire about the progress of the amnesty law. They have not done it on their own initiative but at the request of the Senate, which has an absolute majority of the PP.
On Thursday they visited the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños, the spokespersons of the Justice Commission of the Congress of Deputies, the General Council of the Judiciary, the Senate and met with the judicial associations.
The TC and the State Attorney General’s Office, represented by Álvaro García Ortiz, had been reserved for today’s session. The latter has preferred to maintain a low profile in a week in which Supreme Court prosecutors have warned that former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont should be investigated for terrorism and some of them have hinted at pressure from the attorney general to change the argument, something denied by García himself.
The climate of tension this week in the Prosecutor’s Office has been high. In fact, one of the prosecutors who voted in favor of terrorism, Salvador Viada, accused the Government, in an interview with Onda Cero, of having made “interference” in his work and of not respecting the majority criteria of the ministry’s representatives. public in the Supreme Court.
“They have given us a covert 155,” he said, recalling that now the final criterion will be in the hands of the lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court, Ángeles Sánchez Conde, appointed by the previous state attorney general, former minister Dolores Delgado, and of whom García He was his trusted person in the FGE.
The thesis of some prosecutors is that the leadership of the Attorney General’s Office has maneuvered so that the report on Puigdemont that must be sent to the Supreme Court is against the existence of indications of a crime of terrorism in the case of Tsunami Democràtic and against to initiate a formal investigation against the leader of Junts.
The judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón asked the high court to take over the investigation once Puigdemont is certified due to his status as a MEP. The Criminal Chamber, chaired by Manuel Marchena, wants to listen to the Prosecutor’s Office before making a decision. The prosecutor in charge drafted a report against the investigation, but when the matter reached the Supreme Court’s Board of Prosecutors, it by a large majority dismantled this position to defend the opposite.
However, this last criterion is not going to be the definitive one because it has been decided that the lieutenant prosecutor of the Supreme Court, number two of Álvaro García, will write, with her own criteria, her report to the Supreme Court. The attorney general has actively and passively denied any interference and has assured that Sánchez Conde will impose his own criteria.
After this fire created this week in the Prosecutor’s Office, an association of prosecutors, APIF, has decided to file a contentious administrative appeal against the decree of December 27, 2023 by which the Government appointed Álvaro García as State Attorney General.
Therefore, the Supreme Court will now have to assess whether the requirements were met with this appointment. The Contentious-Administrative Chamber has already overturned several appointments made by the Prosecutor’s Office, among them that of Dolores Delgado as Chamber prosecutor before the Supreme Court – before entering politics she was a prosecutor in the National Court – and other proposed candidates. The ruling pointed to the existence of a “diversion of power” on the part of Delgado’s replacement in the Attorney General’s Office for carrying out that appointment.
Recently, this Chamber has also overturned some Government appointment, such as that of Magdalena Valerio as president of the Council of State for not meeting the requirements of a jurist of recognized prestige.
The APIF now seeks to annul the appointment of the attorney general, based on the report of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which for the first time declared his election as “unsuitable.” Since the report of the judges’ body is non-binding, the Executive moved forward with the appointment of García.
