The conservative sector of the Constitutional Blocks its renewal against the Prosecutor’s Office and the court lawyers

The Popular Party presented its appeal last week and the plenary held a first emergency meeting on Thursday, delayed until Monday. Already in that first plenary session, the magistrates had several debates on the table: if the appeal was admitted for processing, if urgent measures were imposed without asking anyone else, and also if two conservative magistrates withdrew from the case because they were directly affected by the reform. The president, Pedro González-Trevijano, and magistrate Antonio Narváez are both pending renewal by the Government, and their substitutes have already been appointed.

That Monday the first dribble from the conservative sector arrived because that day the first challenge also arrived. Unidas Podemos asked the plenary session that these two magistrates stay out of the deliberations. The consequences were clear: if the two conservatives withdrew, the progressives would remain in the majority. And the progressives were clear that their bet was not to impose any type of very precautionary measure and allow Congress and the Senate to vote on the reform.

The Conservatives saved that first match point on a technicality. The plenary session accepted the representation of the parliamentary group of United We Can, but it did not admit their challenge file because, when it was presented, they were not represented. According to the operative part of the order, “said interveners lack at this procedural legitimacy to urge the recusal of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, because the legal-procedural relationship has not been established.”

That technical explanation for why they did not depart from the plenary session was the last explanation that the parties have heard of. Just 48 hours later, the plenary meeting urgently met again, this time at the request of the Senate, and this time playing in a different field: the Prosecutor’s Office, correctly represented in the process, requested the recusal of González-Trevijano and Narváez. The reasons left no room for interpretation: the professional and personal future of both was linked to the reform on which they had to decide and, due to the court’s image of impartiality, they had to leave the plenary session.

There is no longer any documentary evidence of this second dribble. The content of the first order imposing very precautionary measures is, for the moment, unknown, but it alluded in its operative part to the failed “legal-procedural relationship” of United We Can. The second resolution, the content of which is also unknown, does not mention the recusal of the Prosecutor’s Office. And that, according to sources from the Public Ministry, has its consequences: they don’t know what to do because they don’t know what they have to resort to or the reasoning they have to combat.

Different sources in the plenary session agree on the same thing: that the conservative sector refused to vote on the recusal raised by the Prosecutor’s Office. The matter will be dealt with in the individual votes of the progressive sector, but the result is what is known: González-Trevijano and Narváez dodged a challenge that seemed inescapable and that would have left the conservatives in a minority. The two of them could not vote on their own recusal and that left both that decision and the decision on the very precautionary measures in the hands of the progressives.

The decision has been made ignoring, for now, the request of the Prosecutor’s Office but also contradicting the opinion of Juan Carlos Duque Villanueva. Deputy Secretary General of the plenary session of the Constitutional Court for a decade and a lawyer in the guarantee court since 1989, Duque issued a report in which he recognized that the appeal of the popular parliamentary group deserved to be admitted for processing.

According to this report, the lack of correspondence between the content of the amendments and the general object of the reform is “patent and evident”, but he expressed his doubts about the very precautionary measures. “It raises doubts,” said this report edged by the conservative majority. Doubts because it means agreeing with the PP in advance, something that the Constitutional doctrine has consistently rejected in recent years. On the other hand, says this report, not having adopted very precautionary measures would not have had irreversible effects for the PP: “An eventual estimation of the demand would make it possible to recognize the violation of the violated fundamental right, even if it was with merely declaratory effects.”

A rejection of this Constitutional lawyer in line with what was also expressed by the Prosecutor’s Office. The Public Ministry considers that the very precautionary measure was imposed prematurely, without any type of precedent in which to look and anticipating the criteria of the court on the merits of the matter. In his favor, for the moment and apart from the appeal of the PP, there is only one report from another lawyer attached to Enrique Arnaldo, the rapporteur in the case, whose content is unknown for now.

The reform and renovation, suspended

For the moment, the conservative and majority sector of the Constitutional Court has not provided much more information about its other decisions: the admission for processing of the PP’s appeal and the imposition and confirmation of the very precautionary measures. Sources from the guarantee court explained to elDiario.es that the complete records and individual votes will be public in the coming days, but for the moment there is more information in the court’s communications than in the operative parts of its resolutions.

Nothing on the reason why the precautionary measures are adopted, and a paragraph to explain why the appeal is admitted for processing: the violation denounced by the PP “does not lack prima facie credibility”, the question is of “relevant and general repercussion social” and has “general political consequences”. Nothing about the reason that leads six members of the plenary session to paralyze, in an unprecedented way, the processing of a law in the upper house.

The result is that the paralysis to the renewal of the Constitutional Court remains standing on all fronts. It remains in the General Council of the Judiciary, where the conservative sector that is blocking the process refuses to accept the candidate of the progressives, José Manuel Bandrés, and this same Thursday they have proposed an alternative candidate, María Luisa Segoviano.

The government’s legal initiative to undo that blockade also remains suspended in the Senate. And the refusal of the Constitutional itself to recognize and welcome the two candidates appointed by the executive also continues. This Wednesday its president, Pedro González-Trevijano, announced, contrary to what he had said so far, that he will not convene the full protocol to give the placet to the two Executive candidates, Professor Laura Díez and former minister Juan Carlos Campo , until the Judiciary does not propose its two candidates. The blockade starts in the General Council of the Judiciary and is finally enshrined in the Constitutional Court itself.