The processing of the popular legislative initiative to reactivate Catalonia's march towards independence will be suspended on April 9, in the first plenary session that the Constitutional Court will hold after the Easter break. The suspension will be agreed upon by virtue of the unconstitutionality appeal approved by the Government at its meeting last Tuesday, which has already been formalized before the guarantee body. The challenge agreed upon by the Council of Ministers invokes article 161.2 of the Constitution, which provides that the Government's petition against appealed autonomous regulations will automatically result in their suspension.
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The future of Catalonia remains in the hands of the Constitutional Court
This provision is what empowers the Executive to appeal against any act of the autonomous communities that the Government considers contrary to the Constitution. The cited article provides in its second section that "the Government may challenge before the Constitutional Court the provisions and resolutions adopted by the bodies of the Autonomous Communities", and the next line establishes that "the challenge will produce the suspension of the provision or resolution appealed from, but the Court, if applicable, must ratify or lift it within a period of no more than five months.” This period, therefore, is the one that the guarantee body has to issue a ruling on the contested matter, although it may extend it and keep the law or regional initiative in question paralyzed.
The admission of the Government's appeal for processing is considered certain among experts in constitutional law, given the court's jurisprudence and the precedents of challenges related to initiatives presented in Parliament on the right to self-determination or the implementation of regulations. to proclaim the independence of Catalonia. In guarantee body media, it is never preferred to anticipate decisions, but the various sources consulted refer to the aforementioned consolidated jurisprudence, through rulings initiated in relation to the Ibarretxe plan, which continued on the process, and after the illegal referendum of 1-O and the criminal sentence of the Supreme Court. In such media it is highlighted that the speaker of some of the most relevant rulings on this matter was the person who currently presides over the court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, who was in charge of coordinating most of the rulings related to the
process
. Regarding the suspension of the processing of the proposal now appealed, there is no room for speculation, given that the admission of the appeal for processing implies the paralysis of the entire text presented, composed of ten articles and a transitional provision.
Furthermore, in this case the legal services of the Parliament itself warned of the problems posed by the legislative initiative presented. The Government's appeal highlights this circumstance. On the other hand, the challenge highlights that the three magistrates in charge of ensuring the correctness of the process of collecting signatures in favor of the questioned legislative proposal have resigned. Some of these arguments also appear in the appeals for protection presented by the deputies of the PSC and by those of Ciudadanos in the Parliament. These challenges may be processed more slowly than those of the Government.
Unlike unconstitutionality appeals, amparo appeals must be subject to a prior examination of the constitutional relevance of the complaint for violation of fundamental rights presented to the court. This examination is carried out by the lawyers of the guarantee body, destined for the section of the court - made up of three magistrates - to which each challenge corresponded. Then, the resources that are considered of special relevance, as could occur with these, are fully invoked. But these procedures take time.
If the Government's appeal is admitted for processing, on the other hand, the automatic suspension that this decision entails would make it unnecessary for the court to address the petition that Ciudadanos' challenge makes in the same sense. The requests for protection state that the right of the deputies to exercise their office—the “ius in officium”—has been violated, because said work includes the processing of legislative proposals in accordance with the applicable legal framework, an aspect that they consider unfulfilled by the Parliament Table with the favorable vote of Junts and the CUP, while ERC abstained and the PSC voted against.
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