The judicial cause of the process yesterday fell again on the political board, in which Carles Puigdemont plays with a main piece the game for the formation of the next government. The vacation room of the Constitutional Court – which has a conservative majority unlike what happens in the plenary session, where the progressive party has prevailed since January – rejected the former president’s appeal against the arrest warrant issued by the Supreme Court for crimes of disobedience and embezzlement. In the resolution there is a particular vote in which it is warned of “the haste” with which the matter has been processed.
Until now, all the resources related to the process had been accepted for processing almost automatically so that, following their ordinary distribution system, they were debated in plenary for their resolution. The conservative magistrates César Tolosa and Concepción Espejel broke this implicit consensus when they declared the vacation room competent to resolve the admission decision, without going into the substance of the matter. Thus, the court agreed to reject the protection appeal in the face of “the manifest non-existence of a violation of a fundamental right that can be protected by protection”.
The conservative majority understood that it was urgent to pronounce on it, since the appeal of Puigdemont and former councilor Toni ComÃn was accompanied by the request to adopt as an extremely precautionary measure the suspension of the order of arrest and admission to the prison if they step on Spain. On the contrary, the progressive magistrate Laura DÃez expressed in her private vote that there was no urgency to decide on the suspension of national arrest warrants for two reasons. The first, that neither the ex-president nor the ex-counselor are in Spain – the only place where decreed orders can be executed”. The second, that there cannot be an effective violation of rights that must be protected, since they carry out their representative functions outside of Spain and neither of them is deprived of their freedom.
The protection appeal is based on an alleged violation of fundamental rights such as the process with all the guarantees or the default judge. The appellants insist on the lack of jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the partiality of the judge investigating the case, Pablo Llarena. The vacation room points out that their “complaints” are “reiteration of others invoked in previous appeals filed by the same appellants” and on which the Constitutional Court has already ruled. Inadmissible, thus, due to the “manifest non-existence of a violation of a protected fundamental right”.
DÃez also disagrees with this, taking advantage of her private vote to warn that she would not choose to suspend the arrest warrants in plenary. But it does show its rejection due to the inadmissibility of the debate with which to establish doctrine “on what is the scope of the parliamentary immunity of precautionary measures depriving of liberty adopted by a judge or court on an investigated or prosecuted before being proclaimed deputy”.
The Prosecutor’s Office has already decided that it will appeal in September against the decision of the conservative majority because it understands that there was no urgency to resolve the vacation room. Fiscal sources specify that this matter did not require a resolution outside the plenary session of the Constitutional Court.
However, the controversy has already been served. Since Junts, Puigdemont’s party, its general secretary, Jordi Turull, charged against the guarantee court at a time when the composition of the Congressional Bureau is being negotiated, whose presidency largely depends on the vote of independence training. “Everything in order”, quipped Turull in a tweet. “For many years the work of the TC has been to legally decorate the State’s strategy against independence. And this strategy does not close for holidays”, he added.
Puigdemont and Antoni ComÃn – also affected by the interlocutory of the room – yesterday maintained a discreet silence on this resolution. At other times it didn’t even take a few hours to comment on the court decision.
