The day the Constitutional Court stopped the reform: tension, haste and accusations of "irregularities" by the progressive sector

The plenary session of the Constitutional Court last Monday, which lasted for more than 10 hours, involved a constant crossing of arguments, replies and counter-replies between the magistrates of the two sectors into which the court is currently divided: conservative and progressive.

According to the former, the PP's appeal should be admitted for processing because the amendments that the PSOE and Unidas Podemos were trying to process with the aim of unblocking the renewal of the court itself could entail an indirect reform of the Constitution, to the extent that they implied that it could be partially renewed -incorporating only the two magistrates appointed by the Government- and not by entire thirds as established by the Basic Law.

Progressives, for their part,

The progressive bloc opened the debate denouncing the decision to refer the matter to the plenary session.

The appeal presented by the PP against the Government's amendments had initially corresponded to the Second Chamber of the Constitutional Court.

Without waiting for it to be pronounced, the matter was brought to the full by decision of the president, the conservative Pedro González-Trevijano.

The interveners of the progressive sector considered the call “hasty”.

The conservatives replied that it was common sense, due to the constitutional interest of the question raised and because a very precautionary measure had been requested —the suspension of the parliamentary vote—, which did not allow delays.

The invocation in full was finally approved by seven votes to four, since together with the conservative majority (six magistrates) the vice president of the Constitutional Court voted,

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The subsequent debate was more intense, already focused on the content of the PP appeal.

The progressives argued from the outset that the court should offer full guarantees of impartiality and that, therefore, it had to address as a prior step the challenges of two conservative magistrates —the president, Pedro González-Trevijano, and Antonio Narváez— raised by the PSOE and United We Can.

His thesis was that these challenges had a special foundation because these two magistrates, appointed in their day by the Government of Mariano Rajoy, are the two members of the Constitutional Court who would be automatically replaced if the amendments of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez prospered, and therefore the reform legal affected them fully.

There are two other Constitutional magistrates (one conservative and one progressive) also pending renewal since June, but these have not been challenged because their successors have not yet been appointed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

In any case, the conservative majority established that before deciding on the challenges, it was necessary to discuss the admission of the appeal, to decide which actors were accepted as parties in the process.

Thus, the debate on the admissibility of admitting the appeal of the PP for processing began.

The progressive sector maintained that the legal requirements for this were not met, because Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party had not waited to receive a response to their complaints and appeals presented before the bodies of Congress and the Senate;

that is to say, that he had not exhausted the parliamentary route before resorting to the Constitutional Court.

The motivation for the appeal, affirmed the progressive magistrates, was political: there were no legal grounds.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, ruled out that accepting the appeal for processing would prejudge the substantive issue, that is, whether the rights of the PP deputies had been violated in the processing of the amendments.

And they stressed that the government amendments appealed by the popular were of special relevance because they could imply an indirect reform of the Constitution by modifying the mechanisms for renewal of the Constitution.

After a two and a half hour break for lunch, the PP's appeal was put to a vote and the conservative majority managed to get it admitted for processing.

The recusals

The conservative bloc considered that at this point it was time to raise the debate on the challenges.

In this regard, they defended that Trevijano and Narváez should not be removed from the deliberation because the political forces that requested it —the PSOE and Unidas Podemos— were not yet involved in the process.

When it was decided that these parliamentary groups could intervene in the procedure as coadjuvants, the challenged magistrates intervened to explain that they did not feel concerned by the questioning of their permanence on the court and that they considered themselves, therefore, fully entitled to continue their work.

The progressives, however, defended that the challenges be admitted for processing and demanded that, from the outset, both magistrates be absent from the plenary session while their situation was being debated.

The two refused.

A vote was then taken —with Trevijano and Narváez present and participating—, and the challenges were inadmissible by 6 votes to 5. The argument was threefold: that the PSOE and Unidas Podemos were not entitled to present them because at that time they were not part of the process, that the recusal was unfounded and that it only sought to alter the composition of the court.

The last issue under discussion was the fundamental one: the very precautionary measure that the PP had requested and which meant suspending a vote in Parliament for the first time.

The speaker, Enrique Arnaldo, and the conservative group as a whole considered that this very precautionary measure should be granted due to the "constitutional significance" of the PP's appeal.

The magistrates of the progressive sector, on the other hand, maintained that there was no situation of extraordinary and urgent need, and argued that a precautionary measure that affects the fundamental rights of third parties or the public interest should give rise to allegations and not be processed

, that is, that is, without previously hearing the party whose action is appealed.

It was also discussed whether the most affected right to political participation was that of the PP parliamentarians or that of the PSOE and Podemos, who had presented the amendments and now could not vote on them.

As a climax, the progressives reproached Núñez Feijóo's party for challenging these amendments on the grounds that they had nothing to do with the bill in process —the reform of the Penal Code— but had not appealed a third amendment in which It regulated a matter that had nothing to do with it either: the holiday period for lawyers and solicitors between the Christmas and Three Kings festivities for the purpose of considering said period non-working.

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