The Supreme Court has revoked its decision and finally it will enter the fund of the appeals against the pardons granted by the Government to the nine independence leaders convicted of a crime of sedition by the procés. The Chamber has decided to uphold the motion for reconsideration by three votes in favor versus two against.
This means that the pardons are going to be analyzed and the court will decide in the coming months if the clemency measure was legal or if, on the contrary, it did not comply with the norm, which would cause the nullity of the pardons and the return to serving the sentence for part of the nine pardoned.
According to legal sources, the Chamber orders the continuation of the proceedings and postpones to the sentencing process the pronouncement on the lack of legitimacy of the appellants raised by the State Attorney in all appeals.
After the Contentious-Administrative Chamber agreed in January not to enter the fund of the resources, now the same room changes its criteria. The reason is that during these months there has been a change in the court due to a ball of magistrates with the departure of two of them due to retirement and two new ones have entered, which has led to a change of criteria. The key is that the departure of Segundo Menéndez, in favor of inadmission, has been replaced by Inés Huerta, in favor of studying the resources, which has favored this change of position.
Although it was already resolved by decision, several of the appellants filed an appeal for reversal, which has now been upheld, which allows this same Chamber, the Fifth Contentious Section, to review the legality of the clemency granted by the Government. in June of last year.
The granting of partial pardons allowed the release of former vice-president of the Generalitat Oriol Junqueras, several ex-ministers and the then presidents of ANC and Òmnium Cultural, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart.
Despite being a discretionary measure, the Contentious Chamber received up to fifty appeals against the Government's decision, considering it illegal.
However, the high court decided in January -in a resolution that has now been revoked- not even to admit the resources for processing, that is, not to go into the merits, when estimating the previous allegation of the State Attorney's Office. It considered that none of the appellants is entitled to take legal action against the measure of grace granted by the Government.
Among the appellants are Catalan Civic Coexistence; the leaders of Ciudadanos Inés Arrimadas, Carlos Carrizosa and José María Espejo-Saavedra; Vox political party; PP, deputies and former deputies of the Parliament of Catalonia of the Popular PP Alejandro Fernández, Santiago Rodríguez, Andrea Levy, Juan Bautista Milian and Lorena Roldán; and the former delegate of the Government in Catalonia Enric Milló; among others.
The Contentious-Administrative Chamber took into account its restrictive doctrine on active legitimation. However, now the study on the legitimacy is postponed at the time of the sentence.
