Spanish Constitutional Court has 45 pending appeals relating to Catalonia

The prosecution of Catalan politicians that contributed to the 9-N symbolic vote and of Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for allowing the pro-independence roadmap to be put in vote on the 27^th of July last, is not an anecdote in the chapter on Catalonia’s independence debate. According to data released this Tuesday by the Catalan Government spokeswoman, Neus Munté, the Spanish Constitutional Court has 18 pending appeals against Catalan laws, all of them issued by the Spanish Government. Furthermore, it has 27 pending complaints issued by the Catalan Executive for conflicts of competences with Madrid. ‘The Spanish Government is maintaining its judicial offensive against the Catalan executive and no one is sitting at the table but the Government of Catalonia’, lamented Munté this Tuesday.

The Catalan executive stressed that the Spanish Government ‘systematically violates’ final judgments on issues such as applications for public funding and recalled that since 2011 the Government has issued 56 appeals against the Spanish administration for invasion of competences.

Furthermore, the Catalan Government claimed that, besides an ‘unfair’ financing system and the ‘judicial persecution’ against Catalan representatives, the executive of the Conservative People Party (PP) ‘persists in its systematic attitude of institutional disloyalty and disrespect towards Catalonia’s self-government’. In this regard, Munté highlighted that currently 45 appeals remain pending resolution at the TC. Of these, the Catalan Government has raised 27 for conflict of competences and the Spanish State introduced 18 against Catalan rules, including that which aimed at tackling energy poverty and the law that wanted to sanction with taxes the owners of empty houses. Half of these appeals have been issued in the past year.

Munté also criticised that, contrary to the large number of issues that the Spanish Government has brought to court, the executive ‘systematically violates the law and its commitments’. In this vein, the politician highlighted the Spanish Government’s repeated failure to meet the final and firm judgments of the TC and the Supreme Court on issues such as the transfer of policy on study grants and the decentralisation of the management of the 0.7% of income tax devoted to social purposes.

Regarding the offer of dialogue made on Monday by the Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, and the new delegate of the Spanish Government in Catalonia, Enric Millo, Munté said that ‘invitations for dialogue are fine, but end up in nothing when contrasted with actions’. In this sense, the Catalan Government spokeswoman recalled that this Tuesday the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, was notified that she will have to testify in court on the 16^th of December and that the Spanish Parliament has voted in favour of proceeding with the case against former Catalan Minister Francesc Homs for co-organising the 9-N symbolic vote on independence in 2014.

Puigdemont questions the Spanish Government’s willingness to dialogue
One of the latest examples of Spain’s judicialisation of politics took place this Tuesday. The Spanish Parliament voted in favour of proceeding with the case against former Catalan Minister and current Catalan European Democratic Party (PDECat) spokesman in the Spanish Parliament, Francesc Homs. Thus, Homs will have to testify before the Supreme Court for co-organising the 9-N symbolic vote on independence in 2014. Early this Tuesday, a group of representatives from the Catalan executive, including the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, together with the board of Homs’ party, PDECat and representatives from other parties in the Spanish Parliament, expressed their support for their colleague and protested against his summonsing in the Spanish capital.

Puigdemont lamented that passing the case against Homs ‘fills with more stones the suitcase of dialogue’ and ‘turns into mere gesticulation’ the Spanish Government’s supposed willingness to dialogue. “Today, the Conservative People’s Party, the Spanish Socialist Party and Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’ bypassed the voters’ will’, which is ‘exactly going against what is required’ to ease the relationship with Catalonia, he stated.

According to Puigdemont, the Spanish Chamber ‘shouldn’t allow a court to judge one of its members for having had the courage to comply with an electoral compromise and allow the exercise of a democratic and pacific expression which was exemplary’. ‘Democrats are those who defend against a democracy of pressures and interests, are especially those who hit the streets when the voices of those who think differently are attempted to be choked’, he said. This Tuesday ‘a shameful page of Spanish parliamentary’ history has been written, added Puigdemont.