The legal debate on the amnesty is already underway in the Constitutional Court. The plenary assembly has received almost twenty appeals against the pardon law, most of them filed mainly by the autonomous communities governed by the PP but also by the party itself and courts such as the Supreme Court. The objective of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s formation is that the Constitutional Court separates enough magistrates until its resources are studied by a conservative majority and that the president of the most important is José María Macías, the greatest opponent of the law in the judicial world. Macías, for the moment, has begun to process the appeal without showing signs of abstention, understanding, according to close sources, that antecedents such as abortion allow him to maintain the presentation of the appeal that will mark the future of all the protests against the amnesty.
This is a case in which the PP has not challenged Macías and it remains to be seen whether the initiative comes from the prosecutor’s office or the prosecutor’s office. Within the Court of Guarantees, opinions are divided. Some understand that José María Macías’ opposition to the amnesty law was not limited to a few opinion pieces, interviews and public interventions when he was part of the governing body of judges. In this case, as happened with Enrique Arnaldo, Concepción Espejel and the abortion law, the Constitutional Court has already declared that the previous opinions of a magistrate on an issue do not prevent him from participating in the deliberations or even being the speaker of the sentence. . But in Macías’ case, his initiatives went further.
As a member of the General Council of the Judiciary, Macías led a particularly belligerent faction of the conservative sector that, among other measures and legal initiatives of the central executive, exerted its strength until the ruling body of judges published a report on the amnesty that no one had requested. “The amnesty law does not target the general interest, but rather that of Sánchez,” he also said in an interview last February, before its approval.
At the moment, Macías does not plan to withdraw from this appeal or the other one he will be speaking on, the one presented by the executive of Castilla y León of Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. The deadlines for doing so have not yet expired, but for the moment, the last magistrate admitted to the Constitutional Court has begun to process the appeal: he has sent it to the PP to correct some formal defects in its text and the challenges that he has presented against three progressive magistrates. If Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party does so, the plenary session will accept his appeal for processing on September 24.
Sources close to the magistrate understand, however, that the arguments put forward by the same Constitutional Court a year ago not to exclude Concepción Espejel from the deliberations on abortion are applicable to her case. She herself asked to leave because, during her term, she signed a report that, given that she was in the minority, was not approved by the plenary session, and she clearly spoke out against the law. “It only expressed a legal criterion,” the plenary session said at the time. And this decision, these sources specify, was ratified before the summer by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which rejected Federico Trillo’s appeal.
The Constitutional Court has twenty appeals and questions of unconstitutionality against the amnesty law pending study. At the moment and for reasons of calendar, only the challenge presented by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court last July has been admitted for processing, questioning the article of law that reflects which cases of the trial can benefit from the pardon law. But the next one to be admitted for processing, if there are no changes, will be that of the PP whose presentation corresponds to Macías.
The appeal of the PP and its deputies and senators, explained by the Court of Guarantees, is the broadest, the first to be studied and the one that shows the way for the rest, taking into account their technical differences with a question of unconstitutionality. If the presentation of Macías – whose political and legal opinions so far go radically against all aspects of the law – does not obtain the majority support of the plenary session, it will be entrusted to another magistrate unless he assumes the criteria of the rest.
The challenges of the PP
The Popular Party and 14 of the autonomous communities and regional parliaments that control Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party have launched a second offensive to ensure that the Constitutional Court that decides their appeals is a tailor-made court with a conservative majority. In most of its challenges, the party has challenged Cándido Conde-Pumpido, Laura Díez and Juan Carlos Campo for having been appointed magistrates on the proposal of the PSOE and for their alleged links with the party and the current central government.
No challenge was presented against those who entered the plenary session on the proposal of the PP itself or against Macías, who led the offensive against the amnesty law from his position as a member of the General Council of the Judiciary. The challenges against Juan Carlos Campo, Minister of Justice with Pedro Sánchez before his brief stint at the National Court and his entry into the Constitutional Court, will not need much debate, since the magistrate himself abstained.
If the wishes of the Popular Party were granted as they have been expressed, the plenary session of the Guarantee Court that is studying its appeals against the amnesty would include four progressive members and five conservatives. Just the challenges needed for the current progressive majority to become a conservative majority, its most important resource of the last decade.
This triple challenge, for which different constitutional sources do not predict much progress based on recent antecedents, will be debated on September 24, when the plenary session will hear the PP’s appeal against the treatment rule. One of the appeals, the one presented by the government of Marga Prohens in the Balearic Islands, also includes a precautionary request for suspension.
The latest challenges presented by the PP before the Constitutional Court to remove judges from key deliberations have been rejected. This happened with those filed with the deliberations already almost finished in the case of the ERE of Andalusia but also in 2023, when they alleged that Laura Díez could not rule on the PSOE’s request to review 30,000 votes from the general elections for having worked in Moncloa. More than ten years ago, the then president, Francisco Pérez de los Cobos, did not deviate from the deliberations on a call from the PP, even though he was a member of the party paying the contributions until only two years ago.
