The acceleration of events decreed by Pedro Sánchez before the end of the year provoked a forceful reaction from the political and judicial right, which yesterday was on the verge of propelling a huge institutional and constitutional crisis of incalculable consequences in Spain. The seriousness of the situation raised the decibels of the confrontation to unprecedented levels, with both fronts accusing each other of carrying out a coup against democracy and the Constitution.
The turbulent day culminated, however, with the Constitutional Court (TC) postponing until next Monday the extraordinary plenary session urgently initiated yesterday to resolve the appeal filed by the Popular Party to suspend the express parliamentary processing of the legislative initiative of the PSOE and United Podemos, which seeks to unblock the renewal of the body of constitutional guarantees itself, incorporated into the reform of the Penal Code agreed with ERC to repeal sedition and review the crime of embezzlement.
With this postponement of the Constitutional Court, the Congress of Deputies was in turn able to celebrate the extraordinary plenary session that it approved already in the afternoon, but in the midst of a monumental row from the right-wing benches, the bill of the penal reform that includes In addition, the formula with which Sánchez tries to circumvent, before the end of the year, the blockade of the PP and the conservative members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) in order to renew the Constitutional magistrates with their mandate expired half ago year, which would give a progressive majority to the highest interpreter of the Magna Carta.
This legislative initiative threatens with responsibilities, even criminal, to the members of the Judiciary that do not comply with their constitutional obligation to renew the TC. The CGPJ, in turn, accumulates four years with its expired mandate, given the refusal, first by Pablo Casado and then by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to agree to its renewal with Sánchez, whom the right-wing already denies all legitimacy as president of the Government.
After another abrupt session in which the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, had to do her best to contain the anger of the right-wing factions, a resounding absolute majority of 184 deputies approved the bill, which will now continue its parliamentary process in the Senate while the Constitutional Court does not rule otherwise. There were barely 64 votes against, since the PP and Ciudadanos refused to participate in the vote. "This group has not voted, because this vote should not have taken place," justified the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra. The far-right of Vox did vote against, but its 52 deputies left the chamber in a new protest stage as soon as the extraordinary session began.
The socialist spokesman in the debate, Felipe Sicilia, led the PP deputies to raise their hands to their heads, denouncing that the right “wanted to stop a plenary session and democracy with three-cornered hats – in reference to the coup attempt on 23 -F–, and today they wanted to do it with togas”. Sicilia abounded that it is always the right that "endangers" democracy in Spain, not only in 1981 but also in 1936. "What a shame!" Gamarra replied.
The session also registered a new clash between the Junts deputy Josep Pagès, and the ERC spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, evidencing the deep fracture of the independence movement before this penal reform with which Pedro Sánchez, in the midst of an intense political storm even among his own ranks, wants to culminate the agenda for the dejudicialization of the Catalan political conflict.
In Moncloa the alarms already went off on Wednesday night, when the president of the TC, the conservative Pedro González-Trevijano -also with the mandate expired since June-, agreed to call an extraordinary plenary session for yesterday morning, where to analyze the PP appeal. “This is unheard of!” they cried out before the offensive launched by the PP and the conservative sector of the judiciary to try to stop the parliamentary process of the reform. “They are the foundations of democracy!” they warned.
During the tense day, still awaiting the TC's decision, the ministers María Jesús Montero and Isabel Rodríguez warned of the "unprecedented institutional outrage" that they attributed to the PP to try to "muzzle" the popular will that resides in Parliament. In the same sense of defending the legislative power of the Cortes as one of the bases of the rule of law, the brief of allegations presented by the PSOE before the TC was substantiated. More effectively, United We Can demanded the recusal of President González-Trevijano and magistrate Antonio Narváez. The five progressive magistrates of the TC, in extremis, managed to have the session postponed, given "the complexity of the issue and the relevance of the decision." But this war does not end here, and the swords are held high.
