Almost two months after Carles Puigdemont was pressing at Constitutional Court (TC) to leave without effect urgently the prison order that keeps the Supreme Court (TS) in force against him – and that prevents him from returning to Spain if he does not want to be arrested -, the plenary of the president who presides Cándido Conde-Pumpido This week will address the Amparo appeal filed by the independence leader and his precautionary request to leave without effect that order of magistrate Pablo Llarena, instructor of the cause of the “procés.”
The magistrates will study the presentation elaborated in this regard by their partner Laura Díezwhich confirm sources from the Court, incline to admit the appeal for amparo and open a separate piece to study that request for suspension of national detention and prison orders that remain in force after the negative of the Supreme Court to amnesty the crime of embezzlement for which the former president of the Generalitat is prosecuted.
In any case, Díez’s presentation rejects that the petition is processed in a precautionary way – by the fast path and without listening to the rest of the parties of the process, the Prosecutor’s Office, the State Advocacy and Vox, as the lawyer of Puigdemont, Gonzalo Boye – intended and proposes to the plenary that a separate piece is opened to process that request for suspension, but by the precautionary route (that is, making a decision after knowing the allegations of each other).
Back to Spain in the air
Although it would not affect the substance of the matter – to disclose whether the amnesty deny the Supreme Court has violated fundamental rights of the Juns leader, as its defense maintains in the appeal of amparo -, a possible precautionary suspension of the judicial order of prison (which sources of the TC see highly unlikely) would mean not only a new institutional clash with the high court, but would allow Puigdemont to return to Spain Cutapisas. In a context in which, at the gates of the Diada, the Catalan president, Salvador Illa, already openly claims “a Catalonia with Puigdemont” to recover political “normality.”
Sources of the Court of Guarantees point out that the precautionary processing of the suspension “is not going to be granted”, because if the TC had done it, the measure would have agreed immediately after receiving the request of the independence leader, who formalized his appeal for amparo before the Constitutional on July 17.
Vista Recusations
The immediate consequence is that the resolution of the TC will wait. And more taking into account that, once admitted to processing his appeal for amparo, Puigdemont intends to challenge several magistrates whose appearance of impartiality calls into question (not only he, because Vox has already challenged Count-Pumps in other amparo resources and will do the same in this, and it is sure that the State Advocacy to challenge Judge José María Macías).
This fact will force the plenary to resolve these challenges before not to contaminate their decisions, so it must open the corresponding challenge incident (unless they reject those claims) and pronounce on this regard. A decision that will determine which magistrates analyze and finally decide on the precautionary suspension of their prison order and, ultimately, on their appeal for amparo.
In that resource, Puigdemont’s lawyer complains that keeping the arrest warrant in force prevents Puigdemont «the possibility of returning to Spanish territoryexposing him to a deprivation of arbitrary liberty and, thus, preventing him from exercising his rights of political representation in fullness ». For Boye, that decision perverts “the popular will expressed at the polls” (the expressor was elected deputy of the Parliament in the last regional elections), which is thus “de facto annulled by a court order”, which – he complains – “supposes an intolerable interference in the principle of parliamentary representation.”
Junqueras, also waiting
Puigdemont’s defense frames the arrest order “in a context in which the legislator has expressed his willingness to extinguish criminal responsibility through a norm,” the Amnesty Law, “whose constitutionality has already been confirmed” (in reference precisely to the controversial guarantee of the TC to the constitutionality of the norm). Hence it qualifies the measure of “disproportionate” and “constitutionally inadmissible.”
His lawyer questions that “an extensive, voluntary interpretation and without legal anchoring of an exception to amnesty” can legitimize what it considers “restriction of fundamental rights” such as personal and circulation freedom throughout the territory of the European Union.
The ERC leader, Oriol Junqueras, is also aware of the decision of the TC about the refusal to amnesty the crime of embezzlement for which he was convicted (which keeps him disabled until 2031 to be a candidate in an election). Junqueras takes advantage to Puigdemont, because his appeal for amparo was admitted to process last February (together with those of former Conssellers Raül Romeva and Dolors Bassa), but it will not be until now when his request for suspension of the measure reaches the plenary. Also, as in the case of the Juns leader, conditioned by the chances.