The Supreme on the resources to the pardons of the 'procés': "The parties do not have attributed the representation of society"

The nine convicted of sedition, Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Cuixart, Jordi Sànchez, Quim Forn, Carme Forcadell, Dolors Bassa, Raül Romeva, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, in an act on February 1 in which they ask for amnesty, in Barcelona .MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

Pardons can only be appealed by those directly affected by the crime for which the pardoned person was sentenced and political parties are not entitled to represent society or the general interest.

These two arguments are the basis for the inadmissibility by the Supreme Court of all the appeals filed against the clemency measures that the Government granted to the nine leaders of the

convicted of sedition.

His decision was made known on January 20, but the documents with the literalness of the court's arguments were not notified until this Wednesday.

The magistrates reject one by one the reasons alleged by each appellant, including the PP, Vox and Catalan parliamentarians, who tried to get the Supreme Court to recognize them as directly affected by the crimes committed by Oriol Junqueras and his government colleagues.

In total, seven appeals had been filed against each of the pardons granted by the Government in favor of the former Catalan vice president and eight other independence leaders sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison for sedition (some also for embezzlement).

From the beginning it was known that the jurisprudence of the Supreme was not favorable to recognizing the legitimacy of political parties or deputies in general to challenge discretionary agreements of the Government and this is made clear again by the court on account of the appeals against the pardons of the

.

“Political parties are not assigned the representation of society or of the general interest or of collective legal rights in the contentious-administrative jurisdiction.

No provision of the legislator establishes it so”.

The Supreme only considers legitimate to resort to those who can prove that they are victims or direct injured parties of the crime whose sentence is being forgiven.

And to try to overcome this obstacle, both the parties (PP and Vox) and the Catalan parliamentarians (of PP and Ciudadanos) and the associations that challenged the grace measures sought loopholes to convince the Contentious-Administrative Chamber that they complied with that condition.

But the court rejects them all.

The PP, for example, alleged that it suffered attacks at its headquarters and "intimidation" from sympathetic public officials;

and that the rupture laws approved in Parliament violated their fundamental rights.

The court, however, warns that neither the attacks on this party nor the violation of rights are part of the

sentence , so they are "unrelated" to the sentences of sedition and embezzlement whose sentence has been pardoned.

Vox, among other reasons, alleged that she was directly affected by the pardons because she had been part of the case against the independence leaders as a popular accusation.

But the court rejects that cause-effect relationship.

"The popular accusation in the criminal process [...], by itself, does not confer legitimacy to act in the contentious-administrative process," he warns.

Two of the five magistrates who formed the court (Wenceslao Olea and Fernando Román) have presented a separate opinion in which they defend that the challenges of the parties and parliamentarians should have been, at least, admitted, so that the court could have analyze their arguments and rule on the legality of the pardons.

“The aforementioned crimes did not affect just one person or a small group of people in Catalonia.

They had as passive subjects each and every one of the Spanish citizens, as holders of national sovereignty”, they maintain in their writing.