There is years marked by a specific judicial matter or procedure. 2018 was due to corruption, because a ruling, the main one in the Gürtel case, caused a motion of censure that evicted the PP from the Government. In general, corruption has monopolized the spotlight in successive judicial years until it was replaced by the ‘procés’, which managed to receive almost exclusive media attention from the fall of 2017 until long after the ruling that condemned the independence leaders in October 2019. In fact, 2024 will also continue to be marked by the ‘procés’, but this time by its amnesty.
Forgiveness of all matters related to the Catalan independence process will mark both the political and judicial agenda all year round, because, in addition to the amnesty itself, it will foreseeably also mean the return of the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont without having to be held accountable no matter how much judges may hinder the application of the law through issues of unconstitutionality, before the Constitutional Court, and preliminary rulings before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Both procedures will mean the paralysis of the specific case for which the judge or court to go to the Constitutional Court, if it doubts that the rule issued by the Cortes respects the Magna Carta, or to the CJEU, if it believes that it does not comply with Union Law, which, according to legal sources consulted by EL PERIÓDICO, is It can focus on crimes of terrorism and embezzlement of public funds through its pardon. The case stops, because the judge or court goes to the higher court, because they do not know how to apply the rule to the case under their jurisdictionhence it is inevitable that the procedure is suspended while it is resolved.
Thus we will see how in some procedures the dismissal desired by the authors of the law is agreed and in others the processing is stopped until the doubts raised by the magistrate in charge are resolved, which can take months. That circumstance will once again benefit former president Carles Puigdemont and those who fled from Spanish justice against those who decided to face their criminal responsibility and attend the judge’s summons.
Second Room
In both cases it will be the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court which can be directed to the Constitutional Court or the CJEU depending on the doubts raised by the final text of the law. The consultation leaves the procedure on hold, but while in the case of Puigdemont this means that the national arrest warrant that was still against him remains suspended since Judge Pablo Llarena referred the proceedings to the court in charge of applying the amnestyin the case of the president of ERC, Oriol Junquerasand the rest of those convicted by the ‘procés’, will mean that the disqualification sentence that they are still serving will not be amnestied.
This means that as soon as the law is promulgated and the case is sent by Llarena to the Chamber chaired by Manuel Marchena, the former Catalan president You will be able to return to Spain without any risk of being detained. As the national arrest warrant against him will have automatically expired, he will not even have to be arrested and taken to the Barcelona Courts. unlike what happened in her day with Clara Ponsatí, to regularize your situation. That way, as soon as the amnesty law comes into force, he can come without having any caution against him.
Both cases will be the most covered in the media, but they do not have to be the tone of the rest of the procedures affected by the amnesty law. In fact, in Girona a trial has already been suspended due to the imminence with which this rule is expected to be promulgated. This is one in which four people were going to sit in the dock for the blockade of the AVE lines in that city. The public ministry requested four years in prison for each of them.
The Court of Accounts, on the other hand, decided to hold the trial for the accounting responsibility of 1-O and the Government’s foreign action, although several lawyers proposed its suspension due to the amnesty law. He has yet to rule on the procedure itself, whose stoppage was also proposed.
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The prosecution, as it also did, although unsuccessfully, in the Girona trial, He was against its suspension until the amnesty law becomes a reality, because it understands that the bill presented by the Socialist Parliamentary Group in Congress can be modified in the amendment process and the final text may be different from the one known until now.
In any case It will depend on each investigating judge (in abbreviated procedures) and the Provincial Courts or Courts (in summaries) the decision to directly apply the amnesty law or, after consulting the parties, to raise a question of unconstitutionality or a preliminary question, which will paralyze the corresponding case until a response is obtained.