This Tuesday, the Constitutional Court rejected the challenge presented by the PP against Judge Laura Díez, so she will continue to be part of deliberations on the amnesty lawas confirmed by court sources. Díez’s impartiality had been questioned by the popular people due to her status as a former senior official in the Government of Pedro Sánchez, where she was general director of Constitutional Affairs and Legal Coordination in the Ministry of the Presidency until May 2022. But the Constitutional Court has considered , unanimously, that there were no reasons to accept the challenge.
Two of the judges – Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel – have expressed their disagreement with the way in which the deliberation on this recusal has been organized, although they share with the majority the substance of the issue: that there were no reasons to remove Laura Díez . Arnaldo will make known in writing the causes of his discrepancy through a concurrent vote.
This is the second recusal request related to the amnesty debates that the Constitutional Court rejects. The first was the one presented, also by the PP, against the president of the court himself, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, and the plenary session overthrew it on October 8. It did so, as has happened today, unanimously, although on that occasion also Judge Concepción Espejel, despite agreeing with the decision, expressly showed her disagreement with the composition of the plenary session.
It is pending for the next plenary session, at the beginning of November, the third challenge, corresponding to magistrate José María Macías and filed in this case by the State Attorney’s Office. It is foreseeable that this challenge will also be rejected, as it was presented before the PP’s appeal against the amnesty law was admitted for processing. But the State Attorney’s Office will reconsider it when this procedure has been completed correctly.
In any case, and once the challenges of Conde-Pumpido and Díez have been rejected, the plenary session that will analyze the amnesty law will maintain a majority of 6 magistrates from the progressive sector compared to 5 from the conservative bloc (four, if Macías is finally challenged). Only the progressive magistrate Juan Carlos Campo will be absent, who voluntarily removed himself from this matter because, as Minister of Justice in 2021, he openly spoke out against a hypothetical amnesty for those accused of the processes Catalan independence movement.
To reject the challenge against Laura Díez, the Constitutional Court has applied its doctrine, in force since 2021, that the career of a magistrate and the positions he held before his mandate do not have to question his impartiality, and that, in fact, That trajectory is one of the factors that explain his choice to be part of the court. On the other hand, the guarantee body has taken into consideration that said magistrate did not specifically participate in the preparation of the amnesty bill nor are there any known statements from her regarding the constitutionality or otherwise of the aforementioned norm.
The amnesty law, which implies the forgiveness of crimes linked to the processes Catalan independence, is appealed by the PP and by 16 parliaments or regional governments; It has also been challenged by the Supreme Court and the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which consider it a paradigm of “arbitrary” law. The first appeal that the Constitutional Court will study, when the analysis phase of the challenges of magistrates ends, will be that of the Supreme. Furthermore, it is to be expected that later the former president Carles Puigdemont, to whom the high court has denied the application of the amnesty because it believes that it does not cover the crime of aggravated embezzlement that he allegedly committed.
