The Constitutional Court has begun to grant amparos to citizens who are being affected by the delays caused by temporary problems of justice or by "structural reasons" of their organization —such as those derived from the current blockade situation in the renewal of the Judiciary—, considering that they cannot be the cause of damage to individuals.
The case resolved this Monday by the First Chamber of the Court of Guarantees refers to a professor who claimed a debt to a university and whose hearing was scheduled for three years after the filing of his claim.
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The trial was to take place in 2024, but the granting of the amparo implies the annulment of this indication and the order that the competent court agree on a closer date, in accordance with the right to effective judicial protection.
The sentence issued this Monday by the Constitutional Court -of which the magistrate Inmaculada Montalbán has been a rapporteur-, estimates the appeal for amparo filed against the resolution of a social court in Seville, in which the day of the trial was set for three years and almost five months after the filing of a teacher's claim for compensation against the university center.
The court has declared that such a delay constitutes an undue delay that violates the right to effective judicial protection, in its aspect of the right to obtain a resolution within a reasonable time.
The ruling has taken into account that the litigation lacks special complexity, since compensation is claimed for the university's refusal to formalize a postdoctoral contract, but that the controversy "will have a significant impact on the appellant's working life, who may be unemployed and without economic income.
The Constitutional Court has also considered that the time lapse between the presentation of the claim and the signaling of the trial exceeds the average resolution times of equivalent matters in the social courts of Spain.
In this regard, it is underlined that in 2021 this time period stood at 14.5 months, according to statistics from the General Council of the Judiciary.
The delay occurred both in a first signal and in the second that the court set after knowing the presentation of the amparo appeal now resolved.
The ruling considers that the delay due to “structural reasons” or due to work overload not attributable to the judicial body —a cause presented by the court as justification for its decision— does not prevent the assessment of the violation of the right to a process without undue delay.
The resolution of this matter is particularly significant at a time when various judicial instances —starting with the Supreme Court, some of whose chambers have difficulty meeting due to lack of magistrates— have warned of the consequences of the deadlock in the renewal of the governing body of the judges and their current lack of powers to make appointments to key positions in the judicial organization.