MADRID, Spain – The Second Chamber of the Supreme Court has issued a ruling applying the amnesty to pro-independence leaders Oriol Junqueras, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Dolors Bassa, convicted of embezzlement over the procés. In its ruling, the high court applies the Constitutional Court’s doctrine while criticising the “unnecessary grandiloquence” of the body chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido, which it accuses of a “desire to embellish reasoning that invades the jurisdictional sphere.”
Constitutional Court Backs Amnesty For Puigdemont
The Supreme Court’s resolution is a direct consequence of the ruling issued by the Constitutional Court on 6 October, the first pronouncement by the court of guarantees on applying the amnesty to the procés embezzlement for which Carles Puigdemont is being prosecuted. The Constitutional Court agreed to uphold the amparo appeal of former minister Dolors Bassa and therefore established that the Supreme Court violated her fundamental rights when it decided not to apply the amnesty to the crime of embezzlement for which she was convicted. In this way, the court chaired by Conde-Pumpido set a doctrine applicable to the rest of those prosecuted and convicted over the procés, and now the chamber that tried the pro-independence leaders has moved to amnesty them for embezzlement, with an equivalent resolution still pending for Puigdemont and the rest of those prosecuted who remain outside Spain for now.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is packed with extremely harsh criticism of the Constitutional Court’s ruling, drafted by Conde-Pumpido himself, with the rapporteur of the Supreme Court order being precisely Manuel Marchena, who chaired the court that tried the procés and who makes clear his profound disagreement with the Constitutional Court and its president. Marchena writes first that the Supreme Court assumes “in its entirety the operative part” of the Constitutional Court’s ruling, but already in these lines of his resolution he notes that the decisions of Conde-Pumpido’s court “have widened, to unprecedented limits in its own history, the space” of “constitutional guarantees,” with the Supreme Court thus expressing its view that the Constitutional Court oversteps when taking decisions that correspond to jurisdictional courts.
@ondacero 🔴 El Supremo aplica la amnistía total a los condenados por el procés y podrán presentarse a unas elecciones Un día después de que el magistrado Pablo Llarena revalidase su decisión de levantar las órdenes nacionales de busca y captura y detención sobre el expresidente de la Generalitat catalana Carles Puigdemont y de los exconsellers Antoni Comín y Lluís Puig, el Tribunal Supremo ha aplicado la amnistía total a los condenados por el 1-O En un auto emitido por el alto tribunal, la Sala de lo Penal del Tribunal Supremo ha declarado extinguida la responsabilidad criminal derivada de la sentencia de la causa del procés, de tal forma que se levanta la inhabilitación tras aplicarse la amnistía de los delitos de malversación por los que fueron condenados 📲 Toda la información en ondacero.es #OndaCero #Noticias #Amnistía #Puigdemont ♬ sonido original – Onda Cero
“The mutation of the court of constitutional guarantees into a last instance with the capacity to review the interpretation of any legal norm signed by the Supreme Court is blurring the design that the constituents of 1978 wanted when defining relations between independent, irremovable judges accountable to the law and those who without those guarantees and during a closed nine-year period are concerned with preserving constitutional guarantees,” the Second Chamber continues. Once it has recorded its impression that the Constitutional Court is invading the Supreme Court’s terrain, the chamber goes on to criticise the text drafted by Conde-Pumpido and backed by the progressive majority of the Constitutional Court’s plenary, a ruling full of “considerations that are manifestly dispensable,” Marchena notes in reference to various accusations by the Constitutional Court towards the Supreme Court.
EU Court Backs Spain’s Amnesty Law, Clearing Path For Puigdemont’s Return
The chamber laments that the court of guarantees has accused it of entering into a “drastic contradiction,” of carrying out an “extensive interpretation” and of distancing itself from “common sense.” “The surface of those words, their unnecessary grandiloquence reveals the desire to embellish reasoning that invades the jurisdictional sphere corresponding to the Supreme Court with expressions designed to camouflage the intensity of the interference,” argues the ruling drafted by Manuel Marchena, warning that the criticisms the Constitutional Court’s plenary directs against the Supreme Court are also criticisms of the five conservative magistrates who have dissented from the majority view. “The significant number of magistrates who have expressed their agreement with the thesis now rejected by the majority of the Constitutional Court makes it very difficult to naturally accept the irrationality attributed to the decision under appeal,” the Supreme Court order maintains, concluding that the ruling rapporteur by Conde-Pumpido is “a break by the Constitutional Court with its own historical jurisprudence.”
