The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has requested the removal of the magistrate of the Constitutional Court José María Macías from the appeals that the guarantee body has pending to resolve the sovereignty process, among which are the challenges to the amnesty law, when he sees in the judge an “absolute lack of impartiality” due to his strong opinions and contrary to the independence movement.
Macías was one of the biggest critics of the amnesty law when he was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) and has now begun to process the PP’s appeal against the rule, as it is expected to be admitted for processing in two weeks. Despite this context, the current magistrate does not plan, for the moment, to deviate from the deliberations of the Constitutional Court on the amnesty, as did former minister Juan Carlos Campo, who obtained pardons from the trial.
In his writings, Puigdemont highlights the different opinions opposed to Macías’ amnesty in newspaper articles or radio appearances on Federico Jiménez Losantos’ program. The archives of the Macías newspaper provided the former president with arguments to question the impartiality of the judge, alleging that he has animosity towards the independence movement and its leaders.
Among the articles that Puigdemont’s defense provides in its writings, there is one from 2018 in which Macías calls the independence movement “reverse fascism” and compares the CDR demonstrations with the actions of “the brown, black or blue shirts of the past”, copying his fascist rhetoric to the millimeter. In the same article, Macías declares himself a “friend” of Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, the trial’s instructor and whose decisions regarding the former president he must now review before the Constitutional Court.
“What guarantee of impartiality is there when the person called upon to decide a case has described the appellants as Nazis and friends to whom he had addressed the contested resolution, underlines the writing of the former president?”
Puigdemont also recalls that, in his radio intervention, Macías considered that the majority of the former CGPJ, of a conservative nature, had concluded that the amnesty law was “unconstitutional and contrary to European Union law”, that is, that he had already publicly expressed a position contrary to the norm that prevents him from ruling on its constitutionality.
In short, according to the former president, Macías’ “interest in everything related to the process, including his “demonstrations” against the amnesty, accredits “his absolute lack of impartiality” in the deliberation on the law that will be adopted. mark the future of the legislative branch.
