Concatenated calculation errors

At the very moment when the results of June 23, 2023 were known, it became clear that, without the approval of an amnesty law, there would be no investiture and the elections would have to be repeated. The seven seats of the Junts, essential for the parliamentary majority of investiture, left no other choice.

At that time, the political agenda did not complicate the process of approving the amnesty law. In 2024, elections were scheduled in Galicia and the Basque Country, the results of which, whatever they were, did not interfere in the parliamentary calculation with an impact on the approval of the amnesty law.

No elections were scheduled for the Catalan Parliament, which was the only one that could complicate the process of approving the amnesty.

And elections to the European Parliament were scheduled, which, to the extent that they allowed Carles Puigdemont to renew his seat, facilitated not only the parliamentary approval of the law, but also its subsequent application by the judiciary.

This was the horizon, which was to be altered by the various miscalculations of the different parties, which would not prevent the approval of the amnesty law, but would considerably hinder its application by the judiciary.

The first miscalculation was that of En Comú Podem, which refused to approve the budget project sent to Parliament by the government of Father Aragonés, already agreed with the PSC, due to a divergence on the macro-project of leisure and Hard Rock casino. One vote was missing for the approval of the budgets.

This miscalculation led to the following: the President of the Generalitat decided to dissolve Parliament early and call new elections.

And since there are no two without three, Junts and Carles Puigdemont have decided that the former president will be the head of the list for the Catalan elections instead of the European elections.

With the information we have today, I am convinced that everyone regrets the decision they made. Maybe not Carles Puigdemont. They were playing sorcerer’s apprentices and we already know the risks involved in that game. But they failed to appreciate it.

The Amnesty Law was the most important event of the legislature. Not only did the duration of the legislature depend on its approval and execution in the terms in which it had been approved by the Cortes Generales, but also on the launch of a government action that reflected the plurinationality of the State. What was not possible after the motion of censure of 2018 and the elections of 2019, could be possible now. This is what the approval of the amnesty means. Any decision adopted had to be subordinated to it.

En Comú Podem did not understand it that way, refusing to approve the budgets. ERC did not understand it either in the run-up to the parliamentary elections. And finally, Carles Puigdemont did not understand it when he presented the candidacy of the Junts in the Catalan elections, instead of the European elections.

The connection of these three miscalculations is what has led us to the situation we are in now.

The first two mistakes have already exhausted their trajectory and, therefore, it does not make much sense to continue to return them.

It is not the same with the third. The decisions of En Comú Podem and ERC have their origins in the mirage that was the processbut they did not revive it. Carles Puigdemont’s decision to bet everything on the Catalan elections with the intention of recovering the presidency of the Generalitat, has once again placed the process at the centre of the debate on the application of the amnesty law.

I have written on several occasions that Carles Puigdemont’s decision to leave Spain when no criminal action of any kind had yet been brought against him was legally irreproachable, as was also the exercise of the right of defence from the territory of the European Union against the intentions of the State Attorney General’s Office and the Supreme Court (TS) to prosecute him for the crimes of rebellion and embezzlement.

However, the fact that his conduct since December 2017 has been legally irreproachable does not mean that this conduct has not resulted in a blow to Spanish justice. To the entire judiciary, which is to say to the entire State, since from the moment the Second Chamber of the TS considered itself competent to prosecute the architects of the processhas become the bearer of state action towards him.

Carles Puigdemont has so far managed to prevail against the TS in this fight. But the TS has not given up and maintains its intention to prosecute him, even if it is no longer for the crime of rebellion or sedition, but for the crime of embezzlement.

In order to prevent Carles Puigdemont from being prosecuted for the crime of embezzlement, the Amnesty Law was approved, which the Supreme Court interpreted as the consecration of Puigdemont’s victory in his battle against the judiciary. Hence its refusal to accept through the Ordinance that, with the formulation of the crime of embezzlement in the terms in which the Amnesty Law does, the members of the Government headed by Carles Puigdemont convicted in the sentence of process They can be amnestied. Neither can the President of the Government, against whom the validity of the arrest and surrender order issued by the investigating judge Pablo Llarena remains in force. Pablo Llarena’s order is the correlate of the order of the Second Chamber.

Having made this interpretation of the crime of embezzlement in the amnesty law, the Supreme Court raised a question of unconstitutionality against the amnesty law as such. After the car. Not before. With this maneuver of fraud against the law, the TS intends to evade the obligation to apply the law as soon as it is published, regardless of the fact that an appeal of unconstitutionality is filed against it.

Without the question of unconstitutionality, the application of the amnesty law in any of its provisions could not be suspended. It is intended to cover the decision to exclude from the amnesty the government advisers convicted by the TS in 2019 and to allow Judge Pablo Llarena to maintain in force the order of arrest and surrender against Carles Puigdemont.

In the world of Law, the order of factors modifies the product. What must come before cannot come after. The order by which it is decided that the amnesty law is not applicable to the ministers of the government headed by Carles Puigdemont cannot be issued before raising the question of unconstitutionality of the amnesty law before the Constitutional Court (TC). In doing so, part of the law is unduly removed from the control of the TC. Instead of “submitting to the rule of law”, the Supreme Court becomes partly the judge of the constitutionality of the law.

All this chaos would probably not have happened if Carles Puigdemont was currently a member of the European Parliament and had not tried to become president of the Generalitat. That the TS was going to do everything possible and even the impossible, such as issuing an Order against legemcould be taken for granted. Only Carles Puigdemont’s decision to opt for the European Parliament would have prevented it. This would have disconnected the application of the amnesty law from the investiture of the President of the Generalitat and would have allowed things to fall under their own weight.

This has not been the case and we will now have to wait for the TC to put some order into the disorder. This will take time. This will have to be done in a time frame where we will have to take into account the results of the elections in the United States, what could happen in France with the government of Michel Barnier, in Germany with the elections in Brandenburg after Thuringia and Saxony. as a prelude to the general elections of 2025 and countless others.

The horizon is so complicated that we must not take unnecessary risks. I hope that the lesson has been learned. The definitive application of the amnesty law remains decisive.

Source