The PP and Vox have spent a large part of the current legislature pronouncing the words "repeal sanchismo" to synthesize what their idea of change consists of in front of the Government presided over by Pedro Sánchez. The alternative that the opposition defends against the policies of the present parliamentary majority is clear from the appeals presented by the two parties cited in the Constitutional. The set of these challenges covers a very wide spectrum, and if their theses were applied, there would be a substantial, if not radical, turn in favor of the most conservative postulates in very varied matters.
The appeals presented by the PP or Vox, and often by both parties successively, range from labor legislation to the trans law or the reform of the Penal Code (crimes of sedition and embezzlement), through the right to life (laws on abortion or euthanasia), the organization of the judiciary, or the education system. with a return to public funding of sex-segregated schools and the imposition of language quotas in schools in communities with a co-official language. Both parties have also acted against the decree laws, questioning their content – in terms of equality or prohibition of evictions during the pandemic, for example – or that there was urgency to approve them, and sometimes both at the same time.
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PP and Vox asked that these laws be declared unconstitutional, in full, or in their substantial aspects. Strictly speaking, therefore, a government based on a coalition or on parliamentary agreements between the two forces would mean – if they were consistent with their initial intention to expel these norms from the legal system – that the legal possibility of voluntarily interrupting pregnancy in the first 14 weeks of gestation would disappear and return to the law of assumptions in force until 2010.
In the court itself it is stressed that the PP had the opportunity to repeal the abortion law of 2010 – declared in accordance with the Constitution last May – and did not do so, despite having had an absolute majority for it. Based on what happened in this case – which reveals the importance of calculations of interest and convenience at all times – in the media of the body of guarantees it is estimated that PP and Vox have gone in this legislature to the Constitutional to try to win with their resources what they could not obtain in Parliament, that is, with the desire for the court to act as a third chamber from which rulings could be expected to erode the Government, by deactivating its legislative initiatives.
In the case of abortion, even if there was no turning back on the law of deadlines, the acceptance of the criteria of the PP appeal could imply, for example, the obligation to provide the pregnant woman with information not only written, but also verbal, about the intervention she wants to undergo and its possible alternatives, and the obligation to observe a period of reflection to assess them. Regarding the possibility of abortion between 16 and 18 years without parental authorization, as was regulated in the last reform approved last February, Feijóo has defended returning to the modification that the PP approved in 2015 establishing the obligation to count that permission to interrupt pregnancy.
Another case is that of the Law of Democratic Memory. If the PP and Vox reach the Government and maintain the theses of their appeals of unconstitutionality against this law, its basic aspects should be repealed during its first days in La Moncloa. Vox won by the hand to the PP in the presentation of the resource. He formalized it in February and the popular ones in April. The PP argued that this law violates the Constitution from article one, and that it violates numerous fundamental rights, including ideological freedom and freedom of expression, and even the distribution of competences between administrations.
Perhaps the most controversial case – due to the tensions it generated in the court itself – was that of the appeals filed by these formations against the decrees approved by the Government to declare the state of alarm in order to fight the covid-19 pandemic. The rulings that annulled these decrees – approved by 6 votes to 5, with the previous court, with a conservative majority – implied that they were considered unconstitutional because they had meant a suspension and not a limitation of fundamental rights of citizens. The consequence of this doctrine means that any similar situation that may occur in the future – involving the confinement of the population, for example – will require the declaration of a state of emergency by the Courts, with a much greater restriction of rights and guarantees.
In the Constitutional Court it has been found that there have been numerous occasions in which there has been a real race between the PP and Vox when it comes to presenting challenges. The work of Vox has been particularly intense, reaching 47 appeals of unconstitutionality, which means that it has challenged practically all the most important laws of the legislature. Frequently, the presentation of an appeal by Vox has meant the subsequent arrival of a similar one from the PP. This happened, for example, with the Euthanasia Law or with the educational reform of the Celáa law. Sources of the Constitutional itself interpret that on more than one occasion the popular acted after Vox to prevent any possible annulment of important laws – especially before the last renewal of the court, last January – provide some kind of political revenue that could take advantage exclusively of Abascal's party.
Between the PP and Vox there was concurrence and competition, for example, also in the aforementioned case of the decrees by which the Government declared the state of alarm to deal with the pandemic. The avowed political objective of that initiative was to try to provoke a strong erosion of the Government. In fact, the popular leaders stated more than once that in another country the sentence that annulled the decrees of the state of alarm had caused the resignation of its president. In the court itself, however, the ruling resulted in the dissenting votes of the five magistrates that the progressive sector had, which now has seven. These judges warned of the pernicious effects of a ruling that would make it much more difficult to fight a health emergency, or other types of catastrophes, in the future by requiring the declaration of a state of emergency. PP and Vox, however, applauded the favorable criterion to apply this extreme constitutional provision.
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