The Government's decision to appeal the decision of the Parliamentary Committee to process a popular legislative initiative in favor of the independence of Catalonia places once again on the Constitutional Court the responsibility of resolving a political and legal conflict on whose solution the future largely depends. of said community.
Especially since this challenge, which will automatically suspend the processing of this initiative for five months, has been joined or will soon be joined by others that affect the future Amnesty Law and hundreds of defendants in the two independence processes put in place. march for Catalan governments.
The Constitutional Court has a highly consolidated jurisprudence on independence adventures that prevents unilateral initiatives, given that the Constitution proclaims that sovereignty is not a divisible concept but rather resides in the Spanish people as a whole.
The appeal to which the Government of Pedro Sánchez has given the green light - with the favorable opinion of the Council of State - proposes the immediate suspension of the processing of the legislative initiative for the independence of Catalonia, requesting that this precautionary measure be converted into a declaration of complete nullity of the text.
As already happened with the appeals against the reform of the Statute, the Constitutional Court will have to once again face the debate on whether the pro-independence parties are trying to carry out a covert reform of the Constitution with this law.
In this sense, the Executive's challenge highlights that the error of the Board of the Catalan chamber is once again that of consciously and manifestly failing to comply with "the criteria established by the Constitutional Court."
Such criteria are explicit and resounding with regard to the defense of the territorial integrity of Spain and the powers of the Parliament.
The clash between the PSOE and the PP over the future Amnesty Law has another pending appeal: the one relating to the reform of the Senate regulations that will allow the popular party to retain the amnesty law in the upper house for two months.
Also regarding this, the Constitutional Court will have to dictate doctrine regarding the possibility that a law processed by emergency procedure in Congress can be slowed down in the Senate by decision of the Board of this chamber against parliamentary customs, as the challenge maintains. of the socialist group.
The PP has also announced that it will use its absolute majority in the Senate to raise before the Constitutional Court a conflict between this chamber and Congress regarding the processing of the Amnesty Law.
Pending future rulings on these appeals, what is now at stake is the maintenance of a reiterated Constitutional doctrine regarding legislative initiatives that promote the independence of a territory.
This doctrine, which already prevented the sovereign consultation proposed by the Ibarretxe plan in the Basque Country in 2008, is essentially the same one that annulled the resolution of the Parliament that in 2013 had declared Catalonia a “sovereign political and legal subject”;
In 2015, it annulled the consultation of November 9, 2014 (although it was held);
and in December of that same year 2015, it also declared void the resolution with which, a month earlier, the Parliament had given the green light to the break with the rest of Spain.
The arguments of these rulings and others make very clear the legal impossibility in Spain of promoting the independence of a territory without first reforming the Constitution.
“There is no right to self-determination for any people in Spain.”
The Constitutional Court declared in 2017, in the ruling that annulled the Parliament's referendum law, that "for none of the peoples of Spain there is a right to self-determination, understood as the right to promote and consummate their unilateral secession from the State."
And the ruling added that "such a right, with all evidence, is not recognized in the Constitution", also emphasizing that the consultation on the "self-determination" of Catalonia would have to fully affect the identity and unity of the subject holder of sovereignty and that therefore, "in accordance with jurisprudence, it could not be the subject of any other type of referendum than the one provided for, with the participation of the entire Spanish electoral body, in article 168.3 of the Constitution."
The Constitutional Court also resolved then that "neither the people of Catalonia are the holder of a sovereign power, exclusive of the Spanish Nation constituted as a State, nor can it, for the same reason, be identified as a legal subject that enters into competition with the holder of the National sovereignty".
“The total rupture of a part of the territory with the constitutional and statutory order is not possible.”
Faced with the Law of Legal and Foundational Transience of the Catalan Republic of 2017, the Constitutional Court stated that “it is a claim for a total and absolute rupture of a part of the territory of the State with the established constitutional and statutory order.”
And this is because said law "does not seek or want to be based on the Constitution or the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which nevertheless bind it, thus placing it in a position of alienation with respect to the current constitutional order."
“The Catalan chamber does not fulfill its constitutional functions.”
In response to the referendum law approved on September 6, 2017, the Constitutional Court stated that the Parliament had intended to “de facto cancel, in the territory of Catalonia and for the entire Catalan people, the validity of the Constitution, the Statute of Autonomy and any rules of law that do not agree or accommodate the dictates of his null will.”
The guarantee body added that the Catalan chamber “has entered into an unacceptable path in fact, has declaredly ceased to act in the exercise of its own constitutional and statutory functions and has put at maximum risk, for all the citizens of Catalonia, the validity and effectiveness of all the guarantees and rights preserved for them by both the Constitution and the Statute itself.”
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